Keep Schools Rugby Pure
Whoever it was who invented the new Super Rugby format is obviously the sort of fellow who splits atoms in the evenings and does molecular things in the bath, or was tripping on something highly illegal that would be the envy of John and Yoko.
Trying to understand this format is challenging. That aside, that there is just much ordinary rugby is common cause. It was Oom Boy Louw, the legendary Springbok forward (reputed to be bigger and harder than Paarl Rock), who turned the phrase “When South Africa plays against New Zealand consider your country at war’.
Nowadays, were that the case we would have a rapidly decreasing population.
One can see only by the increasing empty seats that demand is dropping and so too the quality. I know you want to use trendy words like opening up markets, commercial underwriting, TV rights and expansion, but I don’t think we can just keep adding.
Sure, we can have the American, European, Canadian, Korean, and even their Tristan da Cunha franchises, but at some stage our Oros will start to dilute to the extent it tastes like water. When Bournemouth play Hull City (I have heard of both of them), the ground is packed and atmospheric swearing, even if the content is lurid, rings around a heaving ground.
If in our rugby we continue to scatter 4,000 people, a few demented ice cream sellers and a packet of sultanas around the 50,000-seater stadium, at some stage the goateed Media Type who runs the television set up is going to say that this is not an attractive product.
Because there is too much rugby. Super Rugby was at its best when 12 teams played each other once and then a semi-final and final – over by May 31 when we put down our machetes and trained our guns on Tests.
The Currie Cup, which for over 100 years we used to be able to call the world’s best domestic competition, and now we have to resort to calling it the world's oldest domestic competition, is falling faster from 33 stories than the rand.
If some of you, for various reasons, like me, struggle to sleep, what I suggest is have a squiz of 10 minutes of the Force (sic) versus the Rebels and you will be gone in no time, insomnia a distant memory.
Currently, 54 Springboks are playing overseas. That means that local competitions must be weakened. Playing overseas used to be about one last pay check so you can afford your child’s maintenance and the supermarket you want to buy in Kleinmond, even if one knee couldn’t bend. But now we see talented 22-year-olds like Stevn Kitsoff or CJ Stander packing up.
We are just bailed out by our amazing school system, this production line of talent, our last envy (well that and Eben Etzebeth) of the rugby world.
If you want real rugby entertainments, get to a school game.
Professional rugby has brought a lot of things that are unattractive – risk aversion, lack of team 'gees' , some of man's inhumanity to man (when it comes to the playing and cutting of players) – and some oversized headphones. The fact that we do not have schoolboy rugby conferences, quarterfinal wild cards is something to be grateful for.
There are lots of ironies in the difference between schoolboy games and senior professional rugby. The fact that there is nothing on it (no trophy, no cheque, no vital bonus point), means there is plenty on it. Players are playing for pride. Nothing else.
Shakespeare in Julius Caesar, I know for a fact, was talking about our schoolboy rugby when he asked: 'It's for pride, what is nobler than pride?'
The second irony is that you feel there may not be enough rugby. You always bemoan the fact that the third term is only two games or whatever, but in a funny way, that's where the attraction lies. Less is more. The Scots have to wait every two years to boo England at Murrayfield.
We can't sell out SA vs NZ. We are at war four or five times a year. The Soweto derby used to threaten national security and you had to queue around Orlando to get a ticket. Now there about seven a season, none sold out. Its not, as they say, nuclear microbiology to work out, its overpriced overkill.
Spectators are leaving rugby in droves. Its convoluted, over saturated, anodyne, vanilla, pseudo rugby league, where we have to hear phrases like ‘execution’, ‘playing in the right areas of the field’ and, worst of all, ‘we played too much rugby’.
It will, like Anglo shares and Metrorail, bottom out and something will be done. I don’t think they need Accenture to work that out but for now there is one environment that is pure, enthralling, simple and treasured. And that is a school game.
Let's leave it like that. Less is more. Old school is the future, if you get my drift. It's not broke, don’t fix it. Leave it like it is. Plus then we have to go back to Paarl only in 2018.
By John Dobson
First published in Platinum Blue, a Bishops rugby publication.
