Dave
I read it - but thre is also another angle and that is recruitment from schools countrywide to get children to enter the Top 30 rugby schools. Schools sent out recruiters to smaller schools and they then get the childtren tested and intervewed and if successful they are tansferred to the school represented by the recruiter/ Beside that there iis also the Rupert Family that select children for Paul Roos and they have endless money to spent. Willemse and H Jantjies came through that system.
Yes poaching players has become a big problem
In my home city of Grahamstown - Kingswood College, a private school has now lost six major fixtures including against my old school because of their aggressive poaching of players
But as the article says you can literally watch the majority of the schools matches on the SuperSport schools site. Not only the first teams but u14, u15, u16, 2nd teams etc - it’s crazy
They are correct in that some of the lesser schools like Oakdale and Noordheuwel are pushing the big name schools which is good to see - it’s spreading the talent. I’ve watched both sides
search: single moms in my area !!!!!
Stop deleting it !
Dodgy Dave ?
Paarl Boys High is playing Oakdale on Friday and I will go and see the match weather permitting, School boys get free education - including free boarding and even pocket money. The Education is of high level and benefit most kids being part of the program. That is a positive for the kids invovled and even when not going further in rugby they beneft from university study admission as well and ofte ends up playing in te Varsity Cup and Provincial Cup competitions on adult level. .
The process has values for participating kids that could and do have lifelong benefits for them even outside of rugby, .
Enjoy the match Mike - that Oakdale pack is no smaller than the Stormers pack
To think their biggest player the number 5 is still in Grade 11
Crazy
You’re creating monsters in a lab, you know you are ;)
Becs
The problem is that "monsters" are develped in schools with diet and exercize being part and parcel of the physical development process and top class education is provided, My grandnephew was borne in Essex - but his parents returned to SA for him to undergo has secondary school education at Oakdale - where a very high standard of education is provided and where school discipline is ever-present and maintained. Now back to my grandnephew - e plays cricket and not rugby.
Rugby in the UK is not promoted at school and university level the way it is done in SA. So on adult level the player pool is much smaller and that goes up to international level as well.
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It’s promoted in certain schools, Mike. But we’re certainly not so fixated on the game as you are in SA.
I certainly think the game is in a bit of a crisis here, for many reasons.
Although, I have a nephew who plays every week during the season, his son plays minis as he’s only seven, and my cousins two boys are very good players. One is coming to SA this year with his School on tour and one of them is in the Saints system already.
Wrong Mike rugby is big here in the UK schools but predominantly in the private schools of which there are many.
Club rugby here is also very big, bigger than in SA - so all those kids that don’t go to private schools play rugby for a club. The really good ones end up at private schools on scholarships. My son is head of rugby at a private school and he loves the scouting and recruitment part of his role. He spent 2 days in Amsterdam scouting and recruiting kids at their annual u18 national trials - the standard is not great but he says the kids are huge and like contact so are a nice raw product to work with. At his school they can have up to 20 hours a week in rugby - including one to one sessions the works. They get kids from Italy and Georgia as well - where school rugby is low key
His two best players this year were an Italian 12 and Dutch 8 - both now contracted to Northampton Saints senior side
Club rugby here has many divisions so it’s a big sport, with literally over a million players
The UK has by far the most number of rugby players than anywhere else on the planet
I think the USA has the next most players which is mind boggling given how average they are at National level
Here goes:
Participation figures
Hmmm
who do I believe?
David Searle or Wikipedia?
I call bullshit on you David!
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Fuck off you dumb prick - where do you think I got the figures from idiot?
So why are they so different to the ones I got?
even other sites are similar.
yours are so incorrect.
you either cannot listen, read or write properly.
which is it?
Participation figures vs registered players you stupid prick
Just because you are not registered which is the case at school does not mean you don’t play the game
Wake the fuck up you dunce
David, you're such an idiot.
In a very broad sense!
A few SA schools are fighting back now and putting their foot down regarding how bad this poaching has become with certain specific schools, especially players with full bursaries...
Some schools have refused all interaction with these schools that constantly poach players... including regional derby's...
Some suggestions being floated around are that these kids need to be contracted if full bursaries are concerned and they must then get bought out their contract with their buyout money going back to that school..
Poaching is becoming a huge issue in SA Schools
Yep DA, Kingswood in Grahamstown have lost 6 fixtures already through their aggressive poaching policy which of course they deny
Selborne
Graeme College
Cambridge
Queens College
Dale College
Hudson Park
Correct Dave, Kingswood were actually specifically highlighted as a main contributor to the poaching problem, in the newsletter that went around, which led to a few schools getting together and denying them any fixtures as I mentioned in my first post.
Kingswood is literally a joke - they mainly offer scholarships to kids in their final 2 years - so all their lower age groups get hammered, while their first team is competitive thanks to all the imports
I just don’t get how the parents accept this and my nephew is a prime example. He moved to Kingswood aged 14 played in the A side all the way to u16 then ended up in the 2nds for two years thanks to all the imports
Why as a parent would you accept this. Your kid a true scholar of the school and then gets dumped at the end. My sister had little option other than to keep him there as he needed to move from my old school for various reasons, mostly being racial issues.
A few seasons ago Kingswood was referred to as Zimwood as they were literally the Zim U18 side
Good on the schools for acting and dumping them from their fixture list - it’s been a long time coming
They were doing it when I was still at school - Brett Schultz the fast bowler did a post matric there
Rugby in SA was not a code of sport supported by the Blacks in SA - they wee totally supporting soccer. It was only in 1995 and the succeeding WC wins that the game became an interesting part of the new rugby system in SA, especially with the captain of the 2019 and 2023 witha Black been the captain.
From a sport supported by7 million South Aficans it no has the ssupport of circa 30 million people, The fac t is that ugby plaing on school level is basically a problem as well, The vast majrity o the Black community do not have the financial suopport needed for establishment of a viooable player source without the school rugby system with majr support from espeially local businesses and ex-pupils from for instance a school like Oakdale mentioned
At the entrance to the achool is a huge bill board indicating the financial backers of school sport. Although most of the companies invovled have a turnover of more than R25 million a year there are for instance the local eat industry with income rns into the R10 billion range. So the school get about R30 million a year to deal with sport development at the schools - not only rugby but other school sport as well.
There is one thing where I differ from Dave. Club teams in SA is a amateeur plaers in England the Clubs center around major cities and counties recruiting players from other countries as well, In SA the rugby clubs ae basically local communities with extremely limited financial resources,
The first level of professional rugby players are on provincial level so in essence the main club teams in the UK are in the profesional teams - while the case of SA club teams they represent amateur players/ Hwever it is on professional level where comparisons are possible There are other set-ups where a level of semi-prifessionals sponsored by majr cmpanies also adding to the SA situation such as schhol rugby and the Varsity Cup competition/ I say semi-professionals because the competitions are sponsored and the particiants gained fom the sport finaniially,
When it comes to professional rugby one has to be vey careful of thrwing aound statistics, What is nore important is to look at participatuion levels on a [prpfessinal and semi-proffessional basis. that adds to the actual pool from hich international players are in the top end are selected, That is where the pool is much smallerand that is where figures should be compared - since it is he proessionals where the international selections come from and shows the question of profeeiona;ism where the key to the future rugby team resources pool came from
, , . . .
, ,
By Club I mean the second tier and lower clubs not the likes of Bath, Saints etc which are equivalent to our provincial sides in SA
The lower tier rugby clubs in the UK is where grassroots rugby is played along with the private schools - so there is a huge base of players playing the game. Every town has a rugby club, some villages do as well
My son went to a private school and played for school on a Saturday, trained 3 or 4 times a week in the school set up. He also played club rugby, which I was involved in. We would train in the evenings and play matches on a Sunday. The private school lads would do this up to U15 level, thereafter it was school rugby only as the demands meant you simply could not sustain playing for club and school. Same happens in cricket but with cricket being less physically demanding the boys tend to stay playing for school and club till the end of their schooling
When I was coaching Becs came and watched one of our matches - my club played against Old Northampton Saints, I think they were called
Good side - they had a kid in their side who was a bit of a one man show - Rotimi Segun - now plays on the wing for Saracens
They are the Old Northamptonians, or ON’s, Saffolk. They started out as being mainly the old boys from the Northampton School for Boys. It’s a decent Club……my cousins two boys play there, as well as for NSB and one is in the Saints set up now.
It was really sad that my uncle who played 99 times for the Saints, died just before his grandson started in the Saints set up :(
NSB is a great rugby school - they have a huge number of boys and a brilliant rugby system - one of the few state schools that takes sport seriously
My sons school has fixtures against them
Oh they’ll be playing my cousins boys then :)
One of them, can’t remember which, is touring SA with the School this season, playing a bunch of your schools.
Find out who they are playing against
My boys side are touring SA next year
Yes Sir ! ;)
One of the boys has an SA girlfriend so her family over there are going to watch and support him.
No Saffa supports the English
Oh her Nan has already been over and went to support him at some games :)
Participation figures
So where is NZ?
Plenty of the SA kids juice between the ages of 15-17...they come off the roids as they head into their final year so they test clean and all they have to do is gym a little harder and maintain.
It's far more prominent than many realise.
They need to start testing all high school kids playing sport.
I'm not kidding when I say that even kids playing cricket are juicing.
Well, if it’s that severe it needs looking into and stopping.
Not good.
If it's here, it's everywhere...definitely needs something done.
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https://ssschoolsplus.co.za/the-billion-rand-machine-powering-south-african-rugby-schoolboy-rugbys-relentless-rise/
Good read - i could not copy and paste the content