On from 23-24 September 2014 in Pretoria at Curro-Hazeldean. WON by the VALKE with DEWALD HUMAN of SWD and OUTENIQUA being awarded the Player of the Tournament prize.…

The new Varsity Cup rules are due out anytime now. It’s expected that for the 2014 season, in order to qualify, players will have to have at least one full completed year of study under the belt. For 2015 this will increase to 2 years of study. In other words they will have to be real students and not just posers.…

In athletics, Queens won the Hirsch Shield for something like the 12th time in a row, beating out numerous well-known Eastern Cape rivals. A truly outstanding achievement by Queens. Selborne were second followed by Grey High and St Andrews College.…

Following an initial review, the IRB confirms that it was incorrect for referee Romain Poite to issue a yellow card to Bismarck du Plessis in the 17th minute of The Rugby Championship match between New Zealand and South Africa in Auckland on Saturday. 

We focus a lot of the attention on the kids on the field but what about the coaches? Schoolboy rugby isn’t just a stepping stone for the best players which might open the door for them to possibly play at pro level here or abroad, it’s also a good starting point for best young coaches to gain valuable experience before moving onto big things.…

Rockspider has provided this example of what a Super Schools tournament might look like.…

For one last time, here’s the exercise of combining the rankings of 5 websites including this one which makes use of the BHP formula driven system. The scoring method is simple 20 points for 1st place down to 1 point for 20th.…

The water polo season has begun and it seems like College were first out the blocks to establish themselves as “Numero Due” behind Clifton in KZN.…

Here is an interesting extract from a Grey High School news letter. It gives one an idea of just how costly it is to run a first class school these days and where the money has to come from.…

The NFL has just settled litigation relating to a class action by ex-players in respect of post-career illnesses they allege they suffer as a result of concussions suffered during their playing careers. The settlement is for an amount of $765 million.…

Dear Bloggers,

During the last couple of weeks, this website has been offline for long periods of time.…

Grey College’s convincing 40-8 victory over Paul Roos over the weekend, adds to two impressive victories over Grey High and Glenwood in preceding weeks and has sparked a fresh new debate that they perhaps deserve the national 3rd spot ahead of the Kwaggas who actually beat them 22-20 at the Kearsney Easter Rugby Festival back on 01 April 2013.…

The 2013 Rugby Championship will kick off on Saturday.The four top rugby unions of the Southern Hemisphere will be in action.…

 SARU are falling short of making the SA Schools experience all that it deserves to be. On Tuesday night the SA Schools team beat their French under-18 counterparts 17-13 it what felt like a bit of a covert operation.…

Those of you who thought or hoped we might be nearing a time when rugby quotas in SA get scrapped and transformation starts to take care of itself, guess again. For the 2014 Vodacom Cup season SARU has just upped it’s transformation drive by instituting quotas along the lines of those used to determine school age-group provincial teams.…

I’ve added a pool for the Rugby Championship which starts on 17/08/2013:

pool name: Schoolboy Rugby Blog

pool code: jivehuts

A number of changes have been made to the SA Schools starting line-up for the second round of the under-18 international series. France got thumped properly by Wales and one suspects that French under-18’s will have to reinvent themselves just as their under-20 national team did against the Baby Boks at the Junior World Champs earlier this year, if they are to stand any change during this game. The curtain-raiser is Wales versus England which should be a cracker. The SWD Craven Week team minus a number of their stars who are on duty for SA Schools, will have a shot against the wounded Italian under-18 team in the earlier game. It should be good.…

By Grasshopper

Having worked in business for 15 years I have realised that the best kind of PR is that done by others not associated with your brand and advocate customers. In relation to schools this would be parents, kids and Old Boys of other schools and the schools own fraternity.

With the advent of Social Media schools have started to do quite a bit of their own PR via Twitter and Facebook, some even creating business Linkedin profiles. With the huge amount of professionalism in school sport and the large amounts of revenue being handled by schools, they have had to treat them as businesses. However, each school has decided either to embrace technology and social PR or to avoid it. …

The clash proved to be thrilling, as both sides showed fantastic skills, brute physicality and put in a series of big hits.…

August 07, 2013  SA Schools coach Chris October on Wednesday announced his squad to face England in their opening International Under-18 Series clash on Friday at the City Park Stadium in Cape Town.

Western Province and Paarl Gym No8 Rikus Bothma will lead the squad which features seven players who took part of the victorious SA Schools team last season. …

The KwaZulu-Natal schoolboy rugby season ended with an entertaining match on Dixons field in Durban where Glenwood hosted Maritzburg College. College got out of the blocks well building up a 15-0 lead by the 20th minute. Glenwood fought back with five tries during the next 50 minutes to eventually run out 33-15 winners and increase an unbeaten streak against College that now dates back to 2010.…

When BHP’s latest formula-driven rankings come out later this week, expect the country’s two top ranked teams Affies and Paarl Gymnasium to be closer than ever before in terms of points, following their respective derby wins over the weekend against the PBHS’s namely Pretoria Boys High School and Paarl Boys High School. The season is not over BUT one doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that ranking systems and formulas aside, there is one “Moerse Groot” debate ahead IF Gimmies win their remaining games this season.…

The longest running lucky streak on the SBR blog continues. Jokes. Well done to Gungets Tuft on winning the Superbru Super Rugby compo. Slam made it a College 1-2. They can’t even get that right in F1 these days, so great effort. Here is the full leaderboard.…

For a second year running the SA Schools team will take part in a quadrangular international under-18 series against England, France and Wales. Last year the series proved to be a huge success and was a fitting reward for boys who had made the national team. …

Marlow recorded a convincing 22-3 win at home against St Andrews to confirm that they are the province’s number 2 rugby school behind Grey High this year.…

Later on in the year the Schoolboyrugby Blog will do it’s very best to find a successor to Handre Pollard as the School Rugby Player of the year but for now it’s worth trying to identify who SARU will name as the prestigious Craven Week Player of 2013, at their end of the domestic season prize giving event. …

A highlight of the final day of Craven Week has always been the announcing of the SA Schools team, following the unofficial final. It has been confirmed that this year 28 players will be picked. Although Academy Week players will be considered, unless they were absolutely brilliant at Academy Week, chances are there will be no Academy Week players included in the SA Schools team.…

Following KZN’s 46-22 defeat at the hands of the Bulls, blogger Tarpeys planted the seed with his comment suggesting that a change was due This give rise to several other comments being made on the topic:

With the help of Ludz and Noordwes, I’ve put together this Team of Day 1.…

Ruan Potgieter, ns Craven Week Flyhalf, will be in the hunt for the SA Schools no 10 jersey when participating in this year’s Craven Week in Polokwane.

Potgieter, now in Grade 12 at Dr.EG Jansen in Boksburg, will be attending his second craven week this year, as he was also the flyhalf in last year’s competition at only 16 years old, and ending at 6^th overall on most points scored in the tournament.

Article by Rynand Weyers

…

Just in case you didn’t already know this, the Blue Bulls and Western Province will NOT be playing in this year’s Craven Week final. I guess this one brings the glass half full or half empty concept into play.…

Should they have even been allowed to play in that final?

This is a first hand account by a parent who attended Academy Week and witnessed the game between SWD and WP on match day 2, which SWD scraped home by 22-19 but appeared to break the quota rules in doing so:…

The popular selecting of an Academy Week team after the conclusion of the event is back this year. It’s not sure what the team will be doing but even if the announcement is just for prestige is will be a feather in the cap for the 22 players named.

In years gone Academy teams have played against the SA Schools team, played at Craven Week and even had an international under-18 match against France.…