Muir boys: To Kimberley and back
Two pupils of Muir College in Uitenhage , one in Grade 11 and one in Grade 12, went to Noord-Kaap in Kimberley on a rugby bursary, but did not stay long. They are a promising pair of centres.
Muir knew that they had been approached and the Muir coach, Lyntin Gouws, approached the parents to suggest that it would better for them to stay at Muir. But the parents agreed that their sons could go off to Kimberley and off they went on the bus.
They were not there long before they phoned, on the Friday in fact, Gouws to say that they wanted to come home. The environment was strange to them. For one thing they spoke Xhosa as a first language and then English – not Afrikaans or Sotho.
Gouws then contacted the parents and arranged for them to come home but the housemaster of their hostel is said to have said that they were not allowed to go. They told Gouws this and, apparently unable to contact the Noord-Kaap authorities, he made arrangements through friends that they would be picked up just after midday on the Saturday and be taken to the bus terminus. Eventually they left, apparently by sneaking out through the kitchen with only their cellphones and into the car. On Sunday Gouws met the bus in Uitenhage and took the boys home.
It is clearly an unphappy experience for the boys, their parents, Muir and Noord-Kaap.
Muir are signatories to the Selborne College initiative to curb player poaching in the Eastern Cape.
