General

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

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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.…

Wednesday was D-Day for making final calls on KwaZulu-Natal Craven Week players that were carrying injuries over the past few weeks. Thankfully Corne Vermaak, Marcel Coetzee and the Du Preez twins are all fit and ready to go but the news wasn’t good for scrumhalf Matt Reece-Edwards, who has not recovered from an injury sustained during the closing stages of Kearsney’s final game against Maritzburg College and will miss the trip to Craven Week.…

Academy Week plays an important role in South African rugby. The Sharks will testify to this. In 2009 Paul Jordaan of Grey College attracted interest while representing the Free State Academy team as an under-17 player. He ticked all the right boxes and soon after the national youth week he was signed up by the Sharks on a very good junior contract. Today, four years later he’s a Super Rugby starter. …

There have been a number of bizarre developments at St Charles College recently in respect of one of its 1st XI players (or ex-players as the case may be).…

This is interesting and probably not a complete exercise either due to time constraints and human error. An analysis of 352 first choice under-18 Craven Week players from 16 regions namely Boland, Border, Blue Bulls, EP, EPCD, Free State, Griffons, Griquas, KZN, Leopards, Limpopo, Lions, Pumas, SWD, Valke and WP reveals that only 66 played under-13 Craven Week in either 2008 or 2009. So for now that is just ±19%. Incredible when one thinks of the emphasis placed by high schools on recruiting under-13 players.…

Taken from a comment by Greenblooded in response to a comment question by Griffon Supporter.

Griffon Supporter:
Herewith I throw my spanner in the works…@Greenblooded…the calibre of refs we are exposed to in many schoolboy games is not acceptable at all, the refs do not have control over the games and they do not know how to handle a pressurised situation when it is forced upon them.…

Same scoring system as the Tjampions League but this time only looking at how the schools performed against other schools from their respective regions and as listed on the tables below. …

This week the Tjamps League has been expanded to 41 schools. All are shown on the table below so one can see that it was only games between the 41 schools that count. Match points (MP) = 4 for a win, 2 for a draw. Bonus point (BP) = 1 to either winner if the difference in score is 10 points or greater or the loser if the difference in score is less than 10.…

Given all the issues surrounding Craven Week and Grant Khomo selections that have surfaced in the last few days and which are basically a recurrence of the unsolved problems heard about every year, perhaps it’s time for high school rugby bodies around South Africa to address the manner in which they select players by coming up with a fresh new approach.…

This school rugby ranking is a combination of 5 ranking systems used by other websites.…

The 2013 schoolboy rugby season has produced quite a few unanticipated results to date.

Here is a list of 20 surprises.…

The Tjampions League (subjective in its own right) was designed to measure the performances of teams in strength vs strength match ups only. 4 points to the winner and a bonus point to the team that win either losers by less than 10 or wins by 10 or more.…

STRENGTH VS STRENGTH…

After receiving a request from one of the two websites not to compare their rankings to others, that project along with the Thumbsuck for 2013 has been scrapped in favour of this new initiate which combines the Top 20 rankings of 5 different websites including the well respected BHP model used on this site. The results were arrived at using a weighting and are quite interest as it seems to produce a fairly accurate Top 30.…

Updated. Cutting to the chase, trials were held on 2 different fields at the same time as per usual, so it was impossible to follow both under-16 and under-18 games. On the main field at Woodburn Stadium in Pietermaritzburg on a fairly warm afternoon the under-18 trial unfolded as follows: …

As mentioned before, doing this without a formula is now extremely difficult. Ranking the Noordvaal teams on their own is tricky. Between Affies, HTS, Garsies, Jansies, Nellies its really still anyone’s guess who the best team in the Noordvaal is at the moment. …

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This is going to be a defining weekend for the ranking systems with Grey College playing Affies, HTS Middelburg up against Nelspruit and EG Jansen vs Garsfontein. That should have been 6 out of everyone’s Top 10 in action but somehow HTS Middelburg only holds down position 12 in SASchoolSports’ rankings. …

Based on an idea that Tjoppa had hence the name, here is an attempt to rank teams based on strength vs strength. All other results are removed from the equation and only games against other strong rugby schools in 2013 are recorded. Admittedly even this process of deciding which teams should form part of the equation and which ones should not, is also very subjective.

The points system is win = 4 , draw = 2, loss = 0 and 1 bonus point to the losing team if the score difference is less than 10, otherwise the bonus goes to the winning team.…

Match summaries of Wildeklawer Day 2…

With most of today’s Saturday games being televised, it would be good to see who you rate over the course of today’s action. Let us know who you’d pick for your:

• Player of the Day

• Back of the Day

• Forward of the Day

• Team of the Day

Woltrui’s choices:

Span van die dag: EG Jansen
Voorspeler van dag: Loskop stut van Monnas. Frans van Wyk
Agterspeler van dag: Loskakel van EG Jansen Ruan Potgieter
Speler van dag: Morne Swart, no 7, van EG Jansen

Beet’s choices:
Team of  the day: Monnas. There were some closely contested big games but nothing quite came close to the thrill of the Monnas vs Grey College game, in which Monnas did just about everything to deserve to win it but somehow didn’t. They should have taken their penalty kicks near the end.
Player of the Day: JD Schikerling (Paarl Gim)
Forward of the Day: Morne Swart (EG Jansen). Monnas no.8 Wiehan Jacobs also very good.
Back of the Day: Jurie Linde (Affies)
Character of the Day: Corne Vermaak (Glenwood) who put a nightmare first half behind him and did well in the second half.

 

 

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Here are some of my personal thought on the games on Goldstones on Day 1

Video  of Outeniqua and other tries here compliments of the High School Rugby World:

http://www.dartfish.tv/Presenter.aspx?CR=p92421c64127m1512105&CL=1#!AQECAAECAX%2f6AAABAQEAAAABAQEUcDkyNDIxYzY0MTI3bTE1MTE3MjUAAAA%3d

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The other ranking systems are starting to look a lot like the SBR Thumbsuck now. The Thumbsuck is 1 month old now and comparing the current rankings to the first one, 3 teams have dropped out: Maritzburg College, Pretoria BH and Marlow which have effectively been replaced by Wynberg, HTS Middelburg and Oakdale. Wildeklawer is set to be a defining 2 match days for Waterkloof. If Klofies win both their games at WK, they will take over as the No.1 team in the country next week as far as the Thumbsuck is concerned.…

DATE	SCHOOL			SCHOOL
Thu.02May	EG Jansen	36	12	Noord-Kaap
Thu.02May	Glenwood	36	13	Boland Landbou
Thu.02May	Monument	36	14	Drostdy
Thu.02May	Affies	41	21	Framesby
Thu.02May	Grey College	42	20	Oakdale
Thu.02May	HJS Paarl BH	55	15	Sharks Invitation
Thu.02May	Grey HS	51	10	Diamantveld
Thu.02May	Paarl Gim	43	18	Harmony SA
Thu.02May	Paul Roos	30	17	Maritzburg College
Thu.02May	Outeniqua	39	19	Waterkloof
Sat.04May	Oakdale	40	03	Sharks Invitation
Sat.04May	Paarl Gim	34	06	Waterkloof
Sat.04May	EG Jansen	64	00	Diamantveld
Sat.04May	Outeniqua	48	15	Grey HS
Sat.04May	Glenwood	17	15	HJS Paarl BH
Sat.04May	Drostdy	29	07	Harmony SA
Sat.04May	Boland Landbou	20	16	Noord-Kaap
Sat.04May	Affies	17	10	Paul Roos
Sat.04May	Grey College	13	08	Monument
Sat.04May	Maritzburg College	16	16	Framesby

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Using BHP’s ranking for this week and assigning a value based on a formula of 100 minus current rank to each school with the two invitation teams given the benefit of being ranked jointly in 85th position (100-85=15 points), the sum of each school’s two opponents was arrived at and used as the basis for determining who had the hardest schedule. Waterkloof came out tops. The school from Pretoria has to play Outeniqua and Paarl Gymnasium at this year’s Wildeklawer Skouspel. …

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Just a quick squiz at how the school rugby rankings are looking ahead of this weekend’s games.…

Archie from Ben Vorster is still hanging onto a slender lead ahead of this weekend’s round.

GAME	DATE	DAY	TIME	HOME			AWAY
62	26/04/13	Fri	09:35	Hurricanes			Stormers
63	26/04/13	Fri	11:40	Reds			Blues
64	27/04/13	Sat	09:35	Chiefs			Sharks
65	27/04/13	Sat	11:40	Brumbies			Force
66	27/04/13	Sat	17:05	Bulls			Waratahs
67	27/04/13	Sat	19:10	Cheetahs			Kings
68	28/04/13	Sun	05:05	Crusaders			Rebels

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How good is Outeniqua? Well this Saturday you don’t have to rely on a written report or word of mouth. You will be able to judge for yourself. The Outeniqua versus Paarl Gim game will be televised live on SuperSport 1 as a result of the Premier Interschools initiative to provide coverage of the very best of South African schoolboy rugby. BTW Gimmies are no slouches either. Prepare to be thrilled.…

A leading sports scientist has called for a ban on pre-primary and primary school rugby, claiming it causes emotional harm.

Article by Sipokazi Fokazi for the Cape Argus  (An Afrikaans version of the report here: http://www.nwupuknews.co.za/n/af/85)…

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JOHANNESBURG, 17 April 2013: The Mutual & Federal Premier Interschools magazine show will hit television screens tonight for the first time in the build-up to Saturday’s season-opening match between Johannesburg rivals KES and Jeppe. 

The first episode, which will preview the match and provide viewers with in-depth insights on the rich traditions and rugby legends associated with the participating schools, will be broadcast on SuperSport One, SuperSport One Africa and SuperSport CSN at 17:45. …

SBRer Tjoppa forwarded an study undertaken by SAFU a while back.

www.schoolboyrugby.co.za/BokSmart 2010-Age vs Weight Category Rugby.pdf…

JOHANNESBURG, 10 April 2013: South Africa’s popular Premier Interschools rugby series on Wednesday received a massive boost with the announcement that leading short term insurer Mutual & Federal had signed a three-year contract as the title sponsor, with Cell C and G4S as associate sponsors.…