Where have all the scholars gone?

Unusually I sat on an upper deck for the Irish Test at the great ground on Saturday and I looked down from my Olympian heights on a sad afternoon. I had two reasons to be sad – the match and the crowd. Or rather the absent crowd.

There were 42 670 spectators in the ground. It was not full. The ends of each ground made that obvious, for at the ends of the field there is the scholars' seating area and they were virtually empty, unpopulated slabs of concrete. It was so very sad.

It was obvious that the Newlands I have long loved does not really exist any more.

I am old and that means there is more to look back on than forward to, and I remember the happy times I spent as a schoolboy in the packed scholars section of the ground, and in those days scholars seating went right round the ground – on all four sides. And that is where I went with friends every Saturday between April and September.

I watched my first Test there – in 1949, when a friend and I got to Newlands at two o'clock in the morning and were a long way back in the scholars queue, for many had been there all night, wanting good seats. It was one of the most exciting days of my life. That was just the ninth Test at Newlands. Now 43 Tests later that eagerly packed scholars area was largely bare.

The population of Cape Town was much smaller in 1949 but those seats were crowded. Then the population of Cape Town was just over 600 000 and the seats were full. Now it is six times bigger at around 3 740 000, and the seats are empty. Of course, life was different in 1949  which was still feeling the pinch of wartime austerity and there was none of the distractive gadgetry of today – television, playstations, cellphones, ipods and ipads and laptops.

Then, too, going to Newlands was a habit. If you said you were going to Newlands between April and September , you were going to rugby – every Saturday. The playing surface was not nearly as luxurious as it is now – so luxurious that you wonder why it is not used more. In those faraway days the playing surface was threadbare in places but it was used every Saturday and every Satuirday you could see your heroes – Hennie, Otto, Nols, Jan Bull, Hoppie, Jannie, Morné, Dugald, Jan Boland, HO and hundreds of others playing there with skill and derringdo every Saturday.

That's gone and so are the scholars. I was told that only scholars who had season tickets were allowed in. And so somebody decided that it was preferable to have a section of the ground that was largely empty than have people watching rugby.

In days gone by schools were allotted a number of season tickets according to the number of teams they had playing. The master in charge of rugby would put a notice on the board inviting boys to put their names on it if they wanted tickets. In no time it was oversubscribed. That is long gone; schools don't do that any more, probably because the demand is no longer there and the demand is no longer there because the attraction is no longer there.

It's sad. On Saturday last I felt that a love of a lifetime was shunting me aside to be used only when it suited her.

The leprous extrusion of cement where enthusiastic scholars should be told me that.