A sneak preview of the column Tank Lanning wrote for Sport24 today:
After paying a visit to a school rugby game last weekend, someone came up to me and asked if I was distraught at seeing my old school take yet another beating in what has been a rather dire season for the 1st team.
Now I am all for the Saturday afternoon SMS or Tweet giving a mate who went to a different school a little grief over that morning’s result, but distraught? Do me a favour? The colour of the jersey my gran is knitting for my son probably concerns me more.
But I know I am in the minority, and that a vast portion of the majority border on obsessing about school rugby results … And this concerns me.
School rugby results should go in cycles based on the pot luck of the Grade 8 intake 4 or 5 years earlier, meaning you have good years, and then bad years. But I am not that naïve …
FNB Classic Clashes on SuperSport, school rankings on Rugby365 that get spoken about every Monday on 5FM, schoolboy jerseys carrying not just one main sponsor, but a few minor ones as well, coaches abusing referees after games, agents taking on schoolboy players and negotiating bursaries at top schools, 15 000 plus crowds at big games, parents and coaches encouraging steroid use … Schoolboy rugby borders on being professional!
So much so that SARU recently put out a new regulation insisting that if a union wishes to contract a schoolboy rugby player, it has to inform the boy’s home union first, thus giving them a chance to offer the boy a competitive contract. Also – Unions are only allowed to contract players when they are over the age of 18, and recruiting of players at Craven Week is now forbidden.
Schoolboys!
It’s no wonder that a few of them come out of school thinking that rugby owes them a favour. And having coached at U20 level, I have seen a few of these prima donnas come properly unstuck when having to take on the local club side on a cabbage patch of a field at 12h30 in front of just their parents and a single flea infested dog.
But more importantly, by giving schoolboy rugby so much of the spotlight, focusing on results in leagues, and making the weekly rankings such a big thing, I believe we are teaching these guys to play “winning” rugby rather than focusing on skills and encouraging them to have a go from anywhere on the field.
Talent we have in spades, but many SA coaches are bemoaning the lack of skill in our players – simple things like being able to pass to the right, get one’s arms through the tackle to off-load, side step and set up a switch … And I believe this is because schoolboys are now playing the box kick and chase, take the points via a sharp shooter kind of game. I even saw that pesky worm behind a ruck on Saturday!
But schoolboy rugby should be about enjoying the game and scoring brave 85m tries using daring skills in a festival type environment. And in the process producing highly skilled players who can then choose whether or not to have a go at the professional game.
Pro coaches will then have more rounded players at their disposal, and might be more inclined to play a more exiting brand of rugby. But perhaps more importantly, those players heading to the more relaxed club environment, won’t have such massive expectations, and will continue to play the game.
Look, one can’t blame the schoolboys themselves. Everyone likes a little attention. I remember all too well waiting for that Monday Cape Times school rugby supplement to see if our game that weekend had been featured. So this is going to have to come from the governing bodies, provinces and schools themselves.
So how about banning rankings, disallowing branding on schoolboy kit, banning the drop kick, making tries worth 6 points, and making penalties and conversions worth 1 point?
It would be silly to deny any sponsorship, but perhaps channel that via SARU and the provincial unions, allowing limited pole and field side branding, using that money to finance development bursaries via a draft type system. And select teams for the televised games based on the amount of tries they score and style of play.
Could not agree more Tank. Campese said it when he opined that skills were lacking . If an agile, evasive schoolboy player packs on 5-10 kgs of muscle, somethings got to give!
Tank I agree.
As a old Grey boy (still recently; 2002) I remember where we could not take penalties since we did not ever have great kickers. Taps was the norm, or a lineout. A conversion over was a luxury.
You won the game by tries and kicked conversions if it was under the sticks.
To put it in perspective; Ruan Pienaar was in my Matric year and he was not our kicker. Now he is a great kicker, just to prove that he had the kicking talent, but little to no emphasis was given on kicking for points.
In my 5years at grey, I saw one drop goal, which was missed so bad we ended up with a attacking lineout. Now you have likes of Johan Goosen slotting them from 50m while he was only 18!
Tank, an excellent article. Schoolboy rugby is getting out of hand if not already. Having being involved in the proposal of no recruiting of players at Craven Week, the next thing is for SARU to “police” it, then extend it to any schoolboy tournament including the U16 week which has become a recruiting ground. How the stopping of franchises getting involved with players who are not 18 will pan out is another difficult scenario. Although a contract is not signed, the franchise can still offer to pay for schooling and sign a letter of intent with the Father/Guardian, who can act as that players agent/representative as long as that player gives consent in writing for that person to represent him.
You are so right when you state that schoolboy rugby has become professional. When you have Directors of Rugby earnimng between R500k and R820k pa it does make you wonder.
Really a great article, thanks Tank.
My two cents, this problem was created more than 10 years ago, when contracts and bursaries was putt on the table for the “platteland” pupils to join the city schools. Gone were the days, when it was Platteland vs City Slickers.
Then the following problem came, you need to be in the ‘BIG’ scool in order to make the step up. I matriculated in a school, that 4/5 years before I enrolled, klapped the mighty Affies, with a decent score. Now the school is not even competitive in the Small School League.
I can still remember my Varsity days, when we got a call on Thursday to play on Friday, team had no kicker, and we just ‘gelled’ because we knew we had to tun with the ball, because the kicking scrummy/flyhalf was somewhere in the ‘other’ teams. Even our props had shot at goals, cause the emphasis was on running not the two extra points.
I also wish schoolboy rugby would place more emphasis in the enjoyment of the game, that the win. I also wish that the school boy teams would have more respect for everyone. Something I picked up in a couple of interviews after games, the captain will call the interviewer on the name. Gone is the days where they would show the respect and called them Sir, or even Oom. Im 14 years older than them, and I still call the interviewers Oom, maybe Im not professional enought?
Hi Tank, spot on as always !! The skills of the junior players are often not up to standard. If you are in a primary school with relatively few good rugby players, the better ones are “over used”. I have coached at primary school level for 11 years but also coached an under 19B side for 4 years. This year I wanted a challenge and I am coaching an U/14 side. The level of skills (or rather the lack thereof is quite evident) differ a lot. We are not recognized as a big rugby school and therefore lose a lot of players opting to go to the Paarl & Stellenbosch schools. Therefore you have to use what you have.
2 of our best players are centres that went to the same primary school. Apparently all of their “moves” were built around them and their (provincial) no 8 (he was offered a 3 year bursary at a”rugby school”). The inside centre’s distribution skills are shocking !!
What happened at their primary school happens at a number of schools. The no. 8 would take the ball up from a scrum e.g and from there they would bash it up with one of the centres – and they won a lot of matches that way, but to the detriment of the development of the players’ skills !! The teacher / coach is happy because he is “coaching a winning team” !! ?
On Mondays we do skills only for “all our players – ± 42 in all”. Our pool of talent is very small and therefore we have to up their levels of skills. Some of the parents are getting upset with our emphasis on skills – hopefully their eyes will open in the next year or 2. On Saturday our A-team made “only 3” handling errors – we played at 8.30 on a wet field. At least we are making progress but it is a long process.
We need sponsorships to develop the game that we love. The big schools are offered sponsorships because their matches are shown on TV etc. This year our school’s rugby jerseys had to be replaced. We have 10 teams only, but 22 jerseys times 10… the replacement cost was more or less R75 000. We were fortunate enough to obtain a sponsor.
I agree with your comments about the sponsorships though; that Spur cap …. ridiculous
Tank – a great article and I could not agree more with you. It goes further though. Every Sunday morning a certain Cape Town journalist (if you can call him that) has a full go at certain schools and heaping praise on others. This is picked up by parents and old boys who start getting edgy. I must say that whilst I agree with your comments your ex school certainly did not find this perspective important whilst they were winning everything through the use of bursaries and post matric students! Now that Bishops have a head master who has some perspective (and taking massive flak for it) we are starting to see this sentiment taking hold.
In a discussion with a certain private school head of sport he told me that they had decided that there was nothing wrong with the boys at the school and they had decided to spend their money on decent coaching structures rather and to measure themselves against like for like ie not to try and be the next Paarl Gym but rather to look at it in context and say how do me measure up against Bishops, Kearsney, St Albans, St Johns etc ie other boys private schools.
So in a sense I agree – stop the whole bursary thing – upweight and develop coaching structures and maybe change things like scoring structures ie 8 points for a try vs 1 point for a penalty. No kicking outside the 22. And then do away with school rating systems, reporting on individuals, man of the match etc etc. And lastly my recommendation would be to do away with Craven Week and introduce festivals of rugby which involve more boys who would potentially stay in the game longer than is currently the case.