This article was a really good read today. Amongst the things I was thinking about it we are all trying to justify our own existence, including myself, and sleep well at night — but how many of us truly have the kids’ interests as a priority, and how many of us are seeing them as a means to profiting in some way or another?
Amongst the interesting things is that the more dependent school rugby becomes as a source of income, the greater the need appears to be to control the narrative around what is ethically right and wrong. It starts to feel like there is a constant process of justification, where the more uncomfortable realities are either softened, blurred, or redirected — often by shifting blame elsewhere.
Another thought I had was about the revenue stream and its potential. In the same way I have said school rugby needs a central governing body, it ideally needs a collective structure to help schools regain control of their own product and, in doing so, maximise the commercial and broadcasting value that sits within it.
If the WPPL, the two SWD big guns, Grey College, the Eastern Cape boys’ schools, the top six Gauteng boys’ schools, the Noordvaal Cup Premier League schools, and KZN’s tier one programs came together, that would form a powerful and still manageable collective of around 45 schools. You could even add a handful of other schools that consistently draw strong audiences to reach a round number of 50.
That kind of consolidated bargaining power would fundamentally change the equation. It would allow schools to either attract major corporate sponsors collectively or sell broadcasting rights as a unified product to the highest bidder. Either way, the key shift is control — and with it, a far more structured and transparent flow of revenue back into the schools that generate the product in the first place.
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