Kaalvoet on the frosty fields of the Boland...lots of fun on the bus to Ceres and Koue Bokkeveld early in the morning...and having a needle in the kitbag to remove the thorns from your feet on the way home.
Those orange balls lol...we accidentally kicked one into the power lines...shorted out the electricity of the whole neighborhood and melted the ball at the same time...hurt your feet like hell kicking those things.
Ja, I remember playing kaalvoet. Although, I went to Table View and my first day I noticed all the boys had toggs on. Man, my toes got crushed. Only the English school let the boys play with boots on
Speaking of Kaalvoet, we played without boots in Primary school up in Springs in the Transvaal. When I got to high school we wore boots, but I felt slowed down…..stuck. So for the third game I abandoned my boots and flew around the park. That seemed to convince me I could still do my thing, so the boots went back on and they never bothered me again.
I was actually very exited to switch to boots in standard 6...the needle could be omitted from the kit for some games.
You were in the pack I presume Draad?
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I was just thinking back to the days of being laatie, playing with those orange rugby balls in the 80s, think Mike and Mozart played with pigs bladders and Dave, I assume went to the army and probably played with hand grenades or something.
But at all played on hard fields, that's for sure.
I do have one memory that still winds me up until this day. I was playing for Durbanville under 12s and we played one of those Boland schools, think Paarl Gym or something or Boland land bou. These boys were tough as nails and they just pummeled you to the ground. Our backline consisted out of midgets and if you were tall, you had to go to the pack. I was playing lock at the time. Man, did we get eaten in the scrum.
They put something like 50 points on us. Back when a try was still 3 points I think.
At the end of the game, the formed a tunnel for us, but instead of just saying better luck next time it turned into further humiliation. They changed, eet meer mieliepap. This was an tunnel of shame.
I was so enraged and we had a few more games that season with the same out come and the same humiliation.
A year later we are now under 13 and some of the boys were hitting puberty. It was also another season where we played together, but this time we weren't going to roll over. Many koppe stamp sessions and carrying boulders to strengthen our grips, end less cardio and none stop brutality meant we weren't going to stand back.
Well, as they say, a year is a long time in rugby. We destroyed every single Boland school that year. Every weekend we put 50 points on them. We destroyed their scrums, we bulldozed them at ruck time.
Did we form a line to humiliate them like they did to us, no. But we did know what abuse they would get back at home.
My mom had a boyfriend at the time that was a Paarl Gym old boy. He couldn't believe it when I got home and told him what happened.
He was a cunt and it was probably the best piece of news I ever gave him, not to mention being able to beat those boys every weekend by 50 points.
However, the hardest teams then was probably Western Province Prep, they had this 9 that was shaving age 10. Then , Table View was another hard school to beat. However, they had a few dumb kids that should have been playing in a year above but some of them got held back a year or two.
Anyway, hated that taunt, eet meer mieliepap