Shtove- the part I`m going to disagree with is that France should`ve beaten the Argies. On that particular night, the Argies were always going to win. Even if France kicked all their penalties. Even if Remy Martin didn`t throw that ridiculous pass which lead to the Argie try. And yes, a big part of it was precisely because of the up-and-unders. You see, on the given night, the French were just tactically naive, Heymans at fullback had a shocker, and the Argies simply exploited it mercilessly. The Argies won that particular match because they played on their opponents` weaknesses. They played the smarter rugby, and that`s why they won.
Prestwick- well we`ve also got a similar problem with rugby in SA, believe it or not. Many of the former Model C schools- i.e. State-funded to a point, but with a large proportion of their revenue being made up by school fees, excel at rugby. Basically due to the fact that there are excellent training facilities, good coaches- not ex-army seargents, but former players mostly, and of course, because the rugger buggers get their pick of the nubile girls! It`s even more pronounced in the fully-private schools. In the Eastern Cape where I grew up, for instance, the fully private schools like Grey and Kingswood had fully-imported scrum machines, and former Bok coaches. Seriously. The school I attended, Framesby High, was very much of the model C variety. We had to make our own scrum machine in shop class!
But that said, if you look at the fully government-sponsored schools, which you`ll mostly find in the townships, well the daily struggle there is to just get food on the table. So even here, we are also dealing with similar socio-economic issues which affects all of our sports, not just rugby.
My point being that the only way to overcome these obstacles, is to throw the little bit of money available to your youth development structures first. Encouragingly, it seems like you guys have come to understand this concept over the last 4 years or so. And you`ll soon be reaping the benefits thereof.
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Hi BokMagic,
I actually went to Grey and my Ma went to Framesby
, I actually agree to an extent, rugby at the schools you mentioned is at a very high standard, and this is mainly due to very good facilities and very good coaches, also with alot of these schools as they only play against other top rugby schools around the country and tend to ignore the smaller more locally based schools(apart from framesby, Grey doesn't playing anyone else in PE as an example) which means that the competiveness of the rugby between the top rugby schools is very high, but it doesn't really benefit the region.
But most of the top rugby schools have a reputation of developing and furthering the potential rugby careers of the players playing their, and that is a very big incentive for the next "Frans Steyn, Ruan Pienaar etc." to sign up and attend these schools and in some cases they don't even have to pay school fees, combine that with a near perfect academic track record(referring to the school's record) and it makes a for very attractive oppurtunity for any young 13yr old springbok hopeful, but as you quite rightly say most of the funding for these schools is generated by the students instead of the state, and therefore theses schools can afford to have the best facilities.
The real problem for me in our rugby development is not at the top rugby schools themselves, but at the smaller schools and at Club rugby,
smaller schools just don't recieve the funding to develop players properly, and in some cases its the last thing on thier mind, as just paying the water and lights and getting textbooks are their main priorities with any funds allocated (Education should always come first), but even at those schools they sometimes produce a few raw gems, such as say "Solly Tyibilika" (not the greatest rugby player, I know...), but if I think about where he came from Loyiso High in PE, a school I know to have broken and cracked windows, with tiles falling off the roof and plastic bags littering the fences, its an amazing testament to the raw talent we do have, and with minascule amounts of investment, we could easily produce a few very talented individuals.
As for our club rugby, this where we lose alot of players to lack of a professional setup, as it stands the most talented individuals go straight from school's rugby to Super 14 or curries cup franchises, but what about the players that don't make the grade, where do they go? nowhere or to small amateur clubs, which basically means that players who don't make it to the professional arena, tend to stop developing or dissapear completely. As for a solution to this I suppose investment in some of the better clubs would certainly not hurt, maybe a few big money competitions. Im really not sure can be done, but something needs to or who knows how many potential springboks could slip through our fingers.
(sorry I know that was a bit off-topic, just wanted to add my 2 cents on what BokMagic said.)
As for NH rugby, I don't think its that bad, just that there was a bit too much hype about their chances and this has certainly added to the pressure of the WC itself, teams like Georgia, Namibia, Canada etc. have nothing to lose and often just give their all and if they sense they have a chance, raise their game, coupled with a bit of underestimation and it can lead to a surprising outcome. Still the teams from the 6N really need to pickup there performance levels if they are thinking about winning the RWC.
