School vs Country
Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:50
'Double life': Grey College scrumhalf and skipper Pieter Rademan - he also captains Free State Schools and SA Schools
We have had the tug-o-war between club and country, especially in Europe between country and professional clubs. In such a tug-o-war there is always a loser. The same has just happened in South Africa, this time between country and school with school the loser.
At the end of the schools rugby season there are many top matches - competition finals and traditional rivalries. In the case of derby matches these are organised a long time in advance, are looked forward to by players for many of whom it is their last match and attracting thousands of eager spectators.
Suddenly this year the schools had a new team demanding players from their schools - the South African Under-18 team. It was not the South African Schools team but a South African Under-18 team, chosen by different selectors and with a different coach but all of them schoolboys. Why there should be two bodies is thus not immediately clear. The two bodies are so separate that the SA Schools executive knew nothing of the High Performance unit at SARU's intentions and plans for schoolboys.
The result was that boys were withdrawn at the last moment from matches prepared long in advance. Schools particularly affected were Grey College, who had seven players in the SA Under-18 group, and Paul Roos, who had two. These two schools would meet on Saturday, 22 August, their last and most important match of the season. Grey would take 24 rugby teams plus soccer, hockey, golf, cross country and other groups to Stellenbosch - some 500 boys in all. It was a big occasion.
For a boy at those schools it was the biggest day of the rugby season, apart from anything else their last match for their schools. The same would apply to Bishops and Rondebosch and Waterkloof and Ermelo who were playing in Finals.
Despite negotiations with SARU, the schools were told that "as a matter of principle" the boys - all 32 of them - had to be free from the Wednesday till Saturday week to play for SA Under-18. If they were not available they would be replaced. Even if they were not playing on the Saturday they had to sit and watch. A matter of principle was not watertight and Waterkloof, Ermelo and Bishops had the use of their players on the Saturday.
This is not good and not fair. Schools plan and make contingencies around known dates, such as Craven Week and the SA Schools teams. They often make sacrifices for trials and warm-up matches and that sort of thing. They can budget for that but not the sudden appearance of such fixtures as those for SA Under-18.
The SARU spokesman for the SA Under-18 team spoke repeatedly about "national interest", how the boys had chosen to play for SA Under-18 in the national interest, how this would prepare them for the Junior World Championship in two years' time. In two years' time! He also spoke about plans to expand the participation next year to include England, France, Ireland and Argentina.
The players involved are not professionals. They are not contracted players. They are schoolboys. They are being educated. Rugby is a part of their educational package - as are doing maths, singing in the choir, acting in plays and so on and on - the many facets of an educational process.
Of course, good schools strive for excellence in whatever they do - maths, choir, drama, sport and so on. Good schools strive for excellence. Naturally, they are pleased when that excellence is recognised - in academic, cultural and sporting achievement. But that all happens within the context of an educational process. Rugby is not played for the sake of rugby only - otherwise Grey would not have an Under-19H and so on.
The educational process includes fun, physical exercise, character training, team-work, camaraderie and encouraging community unity. These are purposes. The purposes do not include serving the national interest any more than the purpose of doing maths well is to serve the national interest. Patriotism is fine but it is, as Edith Cavil said, not enough. The national interest is its citizens. SARU's national interest is its players and in this case schoolboy players. Schools are not there to serve the national interest. That they do serve the national interest is a result of what they do, not their purpose in doing it.
In any case national interest does not canonise a wrong concept nor is it necessarily constructive. It is possible that the Springboks and their many Tests, national interest, have had a bad effect on provincial rugby and that provincial demands have had a deleterious effect on club rugby. It would be sad if the same happened to schools rugby.
Schools try to inculcate virtues - absolute ones like honesty, compassion and integrity and also dependent ones such as loyalty, respect, valuing traditions, getting things in proportion and orderliness. Now along comes SARU and tells a boy he must choose - loyalty to his school community or loyalty to the national interest. It is unfair and educationally unsound to put malleable schoolboys in such a tug-o-war. It is confusing, and that is not good. And it is, whatever anybody says, not even a free choice. And it is a last-minute choice.
The match between Paul Roos and Grey was a year in planning. On Tuesday Grey were told to put seven players on a plane on Wednesday, not even a handful of days before the biggest match of the year, their great day. Imagine how a boy at Grey must have looked forward to the emotion and fun of that match, the grand occasion, the unifying of a community - all of those things which are a part of a school's purpose in playing the game.
Instead of this great occasion before 20 000 spectators he is off to Wellington with its 200 spectators to play a match in which the community - South Africa at large - has little interest. The nation had virtually no interest.
Lindsay Mould, the chairman of SA Schools, believes that the idea of such a match is good but the timing/planning was wrong. The match/matches were thrust late into the calendar, interfered with schools fixtures and interfered with academic interests at a time when school pupils are preparing for the exams that universities take particular note of. Mould has already had a meeting with Rautie Rautenbach, the vice-president of SARU, and Hein Mentz, the President of the Mpumalanga Rugby Union, and they have assured him of an investigation into the matter and further assured him that this will not happen again - not with this sort of timing and not without some consultation with SA Schools committee.
There are several unsatisfactory aspects of what has just happened and the unseemly haste with which it occurred.
to schools put in a great deal of planning and effort into their rugby seasons. Grey, will start months before the season opens with preparations, training, strength and conditioning, game plans and structures. Then players are suddenly out of the team, thus diminishing the occasion to which thousands of old boys, parents, boys and other spectators look forward. Should it then be better not to put in so much effort, have less developed players and so lose only one or two players to the national interest?
Just one other thing: schools now offer bursaries to sportsmen, as they do to academics. In newspapers you will see this happening overtly - rugby bursaries are offered. Come the biggest game of the season that bursary holder is suddenly taken from the match. Are schools compensated?
By Paul Dobson
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