Ever since I found out last long weekend that three promising Menlopark players, including their centre and hooker, were defecting to Garsfontein, a lot of thoughts have been running through my mind.
But perhaps the most worrying part was that I wasn’t shocked.
There was a strange mixture of expectation and resignation. Over the preceding few days, several other player movements had come to my attention, and suddenly another high-profile transfer didn’t feel like an exception. It felt like confirmation of where schoolboy rugby is heading.
The question was no longer if this is happening. It was why it is happening — and, more importantly, what it means for the future of schoolboy rugby.
A new norm
Just about every leading school is either actively involved in some form of player recruitment after Grade-8 or, at the very least, entertaining the idea of acquiring better players from elsewhere.
The reasons boys leave their schools are varied. The reason a new school is generally happy to receive them, however, is far simpler:
Better players mean a better chance of better results.
And winning has become an increasingly valuable commodity.
The professionalism label
You almost hear the word professionalism as often as you hear the words schoolboy rugby in interviews these days.
For many top schools, rugby is no longer simply one part of the educational offering. Fewer and fewer schools rely on teachers as their principal coaches. Increasingly, those positions are being filled by outsiders, some of whom are paid very well in comparison with teachers.
There is no question that this dedicated attention has lifted standards. The coaching is better, preparation is more sophisticated and the overall product has improved.
But professionalism brings its own set of challenges.
Expectations rise. Job security becomes linked to results. Winning becomes measurable, scrutinised and, in some cases, almost non-negotiable.
And that is where the conflict begins.
Because when the rugby programme becomes professionalised, it is unrealistic to expect the players to remain completely untouched by that culture.
When adults are investing money, time, resources and reputations into winning, why would we expect the boys to be indifferent to the rewards that come with being part of the winning machine?
If everything around schoolboy rugby is becoming professional, don’t be surprised when the players become part of that equation too.
Money rugby
Money is already a major ingredient in sporting success.
In schoolboy rugby, it is increasingly giving governing bodies, wealthy parents and influential old boys a greater say. At the same time, it is slowly eroding the influence of headmasters — although certainly not all of them — who are often the people best placed to maintain a level-headed view of what schools are actually supposed to achieve.
Their responsibility extends far beyond what happens on a Saturday afternoon.
They understand that the ultimate purpose of a school is to develop boys into men, and that rugby is only one component of that process.
But those whose primary interest is winning on Saturday don’t necessarily share that philosophy. They may pay lip service to the broader purpose of education, but the danger is that rugby begins to receive disproportionate attention while the other qualities that make a school great become secondary.
And therein lies the uncomfortable truth.
Wins may be the destination, but money is increasingly paving the road to get there.
It is money that makes sophisticated rugby programmes possible. It is money that attracts coaches. It is money that creates opportunities. And, increasingly, it is money that makes player movement possible.
Do not underestimate the greed of agents and scouts
As uncomfortable as it may be to acknowledge, agents and scouts who stand to profit from player movements are an increasingly significant part of the equation. Where money is involved, the temptation to manufacture opportunities — and to push a deal across the line at almost any cost — can be considerable. Some will stoop to remarkable lows to make a transfer happen.
Headmasters on different wavelengths
There are plenty of headmasters who privately believe that certain practices by certain schools have crossed a line.
The problem is that many simply don’t have the time, energy or collective influence to do anything about it.
Getting enough of the major schools around the same table and agreeing on a set of principles that everyone is prepared to enforce would be enormously difficult.
But without some form of collective agreement, the arms race will continue.
Each school is effectively forced to make its own decisions based on what it believes its competitors are doing.
And when everyone believes the others are already doing it, recruitment stops being a question of principle and becomes a question of self-preservation:
If we don’t take the player, someone else will.
Where is the morality line?
One of the most fascinating aspects of schoolboy rugby is talking to people who have an active interest in what is happening behind the scenes and hearing their definitions of right and wrong.
Almost invariably, the acceptable level of recruitment seems to align perfectly with what their own school is doing.
For the latest Menlopark-to-Garsfontein movement, many people immediately identified the fact that the boys were moving just ahead of their final year of school as the point at which an invisible line had been crossed.
But where exactly is that line?
And who gets to draw it?
Garsfontein’s situation immediately reminded me of two previous cases.
Before Covid, Transvalia had built an outstanding team that performed well through the age groups. Just before those boys reached matric and had the opportunity to elevate Valia’s 1st XV into the limelight on a national stage, bigger and wealthier schools came calling.
Several key players left. Transvalia subsequently struggled through a difficult season.
One of those players was Zeilinga Strydom, who moved to Garsfontein. Another well-known example was Garsfontein star Abner van Reenen, who joined Paarl Boys’ High and represented them at u19 level in his final year of school.
So where exactly do we place the moral boundary?
One year before matric?
Two?
Never?
The Greenblooded theory: quality over quantity
Many years ago, a former user on the schoolboy blog forum, Greenblooded, put forward an argument that has always stuck with me.
His theory was essentially that it shouldn’t matter whether your school poaches one player or ten. From the perspective of the school losing a player, the damage is the same.
Ten incoming players may feel ten times worse.
But if one school loses its star player, while ten other schools each lose one star player to the same powerhouse, the impact on each individual school is still significant.
It is a useful way of looking at the issue because it strips away some of the emotion.
The numbers may differ.
The principle does not.
And what about the boys who get replaced?
This is yet another uncomfortable part of the entire debate.
For every new player who arrives, there is potentially a boy already in the system whose dream of playing first-team rugby has just become considerably more difficult.
In the Garsies case, as many as three boys could potentially be pushed down the pecking order by the arrivals.
That creates another fascinating argument: are we talking about a protected school environment or the real world?
And perhaps there is another question that doesn’t get asked often enough:
Who paid for the boy who has now been replaced?
If his family funded everything themselves — school fees, tours, kit and all the extras that come with a high-level rugby programme — is his displacement viewed differently from that of a player whose entire journey was funded by the school?
There are no easy answers.
The Anton Segner argument
This might seem like a strange detour, but bear with me.
I have watched Anton Segner play a number of Super Rugby matches, yet it was only during this year’s New Zealand tour of South Africa that I discovered he was born and raised in Germany.
He could have stayed in Germany and potentially become a legend of German rugby in much the same way Mamuka Gorgodze became a Georgian icon.
Instead, he chased a small piece of the big-stage dream.
He may never be remembered as one of the greats of the game, but he has put himself in a position to play alongside — and against — some of the great players of his generation.
And perhaps this is becoming increasingly relevant to schoolboy rugby.
For many boys, school rugby will be the highest point of their playing careers.
Some will go on to play professionally. Others will represent provinces or countries. But many will never again experience the same level of recognition, popularity or status that they enjoyed at school.
Now imagine being a talented schoolboy and being offered the opportunity to play regularly against the best players in the country, on the biggest schoolboy stages, in matches that attract national attention.
There is an obvious attraction.
For years, a handful of schools occupied that space.
Now there are newcomers.
Garsfontein is perhaps the most obvious example. They have dramatically increased their profile, recruited highly rated players and established themselves as a genuine force capable of competing with the traditional powerhouses on a stage that increasingly resembles what many refer to as “test” rugby.
That matters.
Because some boys may no longer want to be the biggest fish in a small pond.
They want to test themselves against the best.
And if moving schools gives them that opportunity, it becomes much easier to understand why they might make the move.
The big guns need competition too
Sport is supposed to be about competition.
The objective should be to get onto the field, do your best to beat your opponent and let the scoreboard tell the story.
The politics on the sidelines should ideally stay there.
We should also accept that the playing field isn’t level. Some schools have enormous resources. Others don’t.
But there is an important distinction between an unequal playing field and a competition that becomes so one-sided that nobody benefits.
Too many mismatches defeat the purpose of schoolboy rugby.
The objective shouldn’t be to accumulate cricket scores.
It should be to compete at a level where both teams have a realistic opportunity to test themselves.
For the national powerhouse schools, finding that level consistently is not easy outside of matches against other powerhouse schools.
That is why being overly critical of schools that go to extraordinary lengths to build a high-end rugby programme can be counterproductive.
The desire to win is not the problem.
The problem is when winning becomes more important than meaningful competition.
Ideally, the goal should be to build a programme strong enough to secure enough matches against teams of comparable quality that the boys actually get the experience of being tested.
That is what elite sport is supposed to provide.
What will Menlo do?
Recruiting players from a neighbouring school in the same competitive environment is particularly sensitive.
It will be a major surprise if Menlopark simply takes this one on the chin and moves on.
Headmaster Kobus Hardman must surely be under enormous pressure to respond.
Whether that response is public or private remains to be seen.
But there is little doubt that Menlopark will be watching this situation very closely.
Kobus Hardman is, of course, the same headmaster who took the decision to cancel Menlopark’s derby against Affies. Whatever the intentions behind that decision — and they may well have been entirely honourable — there is an uncomfortable irony to it. In trying to protect Menlo from a mismatch, the decision arguably placed the school in a bracket below Garsfontein, a school that has gone toe-to-toe with Affies in several memorable 1st XV encounters in recent years.
Menlo’s tartan track
And then there is the slightly ironic twist.
Hooker Dian de Bruin is going to put his hand up strongly for Craven Week and potentially higher honours in 2027.
Centre Danie Botma perhaps faces a more difficult route to the top, with the likes of Affies trio Dandre Brink, Rico du Plessis and Heinrich Bekker among the midfielders he will have to contend with.
But Botma is a special player.
He has the ability to carve up almost any midfield.
There is a possibility that Garsfontein supporters could experience something of the Diego Appollis phenomenon all over again in 2027.
But among the things Danie Botma — and his younger brother — will be leaving behind is the beautiful blue tartan athletics track at Menlopark.
If nothing else, that track is one hell of a marketing tool.
It just didn’t work in the case of these two athletes.
And perhaps that is the most telling part of this entire story.
The traditional attractions of a school are changing.
The definition of what makes a school the place to be is changing.
And schoolboy rugby, whether we like it or not, is changing with it.
The question now is not whether this new age has arrived.
It has.
The real question is how far we are prepared to let it go.
@beet (Comment #15) I don’t really want to be part of this debate – I’ve told you before, if a schoolboy rugby player leaves for another school, his original school should ask themselves, what did we do wrong?. Having said that, when I read here about the Menlo boys leaving (in droves, apparently), I wondered by myself: how much of this is as a result of the Menlo-EG Jansen debacle, and the possible consequences that may well follow?
@Skywalker (Comment #12)
To me the bursary part is so hard to monitor or enforce. There are so many different ways to fund a player that do not run through a school’s books.
On the topic of bursaries, there is an issue involving St Charles star u16 centre joining KES. Seems like SCC is hoping to get the bursary money spent back. That has always been a bone of contention for schools who invest the equivalent amount of money on a student every year in the hopes of recouping that when he plays first team rugby one day. When that does not materialise they lose out big time financially.
@Rainier (Comment #8)
Names aside, I would always say to parents go back and try sort out your differences with the current school. That includes Abner’s case. If I remember correctly Garsies were and still are a top academic school and they were trying to help Abner get through school which made it even more imperative that he stayed in Pretoria IMO. I think it was documented what happened in the end.
But I speak from a perfect world scenario. In the real world schools have to make decisions that are in their own best interests – short, medium and long term, even if they are unpopular in the court of public opinion.
I also want to add that from my past experiences involving pure poaching cases, one of the elements that came across was the coaching of parents and kids on what to say and do and what not to say and not to do. Those were particularly interesting in the situations where kids disappeared from the old schools without anyone knowing and resurfaced at new schools. I also recall a case many years ago where a parent genuinely marketed his son in order to try create a better opportunity for him in a bigger province. It did not work out as planned. He enrolled at a new school that already had a decent player in his position and in the end he did not make the CW team in the bigger province but he got the exposure and went on to play junior union rugby after school. What stuck with me was what an official at the new school said to me – he said we took the player because we did not want a rival school in the province to get him. IOW they did not accept him on the grounds of a need in their squad, they did it to make sure he would not become a local opponent.
@BereFan (Comment #13) 3 seuns uit een span, aan die einde van hul Gr.11 jaar en dan eindig al 3 op by dieselfde skool. Dink nie so iets het al ooit gebeur nie? Dit is ‘n baie unieke situasie en dis hoekom dit so nuuswaardig is!
@Maroon machine supporter (Comment #10)
Die probleem daarmee is wanneer spelers graad 10 na enige sogenaamde tradisionele top 5 skool toe skuif dan is dit fine, sodra n seun in gr10 na Garsfontein toe skuif dan word daar gevra hoekom nie eerder in gr8 werf en ontwikkel nie. Dink almal is maar net so biejtie moeg vir die dubbelstandaarde. Daar word immers oor geen ander skool se werwing en kopery artikels gepubliseer op minstens 5 verskillende skolerugby webtuistes nie.
I may be wrong but I think at one stage in KZN there was a ruling that if a child was on a bursary at 1 school they could not be given a bursary at another. There are ways around this of course with private funders, but perhaps it helped with this. Also not sure if they needed to inform the school that they had been approached by the child or parents?
@Wonder (Comment #7) …en vir Travis het sy skuif na PRG vrug gelewer. Dink nie hy sou SA skole vanuit die OP CW span gehaal het nie!? Ek kry die 3 seuns van Menlo half jammer. Hulle gaan onder geweldige druk wees volgende jaar. Bly ek is nie in hulle “stewels” nie…ek vermoed daar gaan vele uitdagings wees. Hulle gaan beslis die mees gemerkte spelers in Pretoria en Gauteng wees…
@Wonder (Comment #7) Travis was darem van begin Gr.10 af in PRG. Begin Gr.12 en dan sommer 3 manne op een slag is ‘n heel ander ball game…
Weet iemand watter rol die Blou Bulle speel in Garsfontein se kopery? Daar loop lank reeds gerugte rond dat die Bulle nie net by Garsfontein nie, maar ook betrokke is by Outeniqua in George. Ek raak maar altyd agterdogtig as skole se laer spanne swak presteer, maar die /19 A span is kompiterend. Veral in gevalle waar hul skaars 4 spanne in elke ourderdomsgroep in die veld kan stoot. Die “lok” van spelers is so oud soos die berge en sal nie maklik verander nie. Party skole lok egter kwaliteit spelers op ‘n meer generiese wyse omdat jong rugby spelers self besluit om na die betrokke skole te gaan na Graad 7. Grey Bloemfontein, Affies, Paul Roos, Paarl Gimnasium en Paarl HJS is voorbeelde hiervan. Dit skep ‘n scenario waar dié betrokke skole kan kies uit die room van die oes, sonder om die spelers met beurse te “lok”. Die hele debat rondom “rugby begrotings” blyk die indruk te skep dat skole met groot begrotings, spelers koop. Dis egter nie die geval nie. Skole met groot begrotings is veel meer geneig om kwaliteit afrigters aan te stel om hul rugby program te bestuur.Ek sien geen fout daarmee nie, maar vrae kan wel gevra word oor die koop van spelers om slegs ‘n sterk /19A span te bou…..
@beet (Comment #4) I am sorry, but I believe you are wrong. Recruitment, by its inherent definition, is actively finding, recruiting and embedding talent by the recruiting organisation. Do you believe Garsfontein should have denied the boys admission? Were you of the same opinion when Abner moved?
@boerboel (Comment #2) Dan moet HJS seker vir alryd geskors word. Delayed option Tyler, Menlo se agsteman van 2025 wat nou vir HJS speel, Menlo se huidige 0/16 agsteman gaan 2027 HJS toe. Skors ook vir Paul Roos oor Travis en omdat hulle vir Grey High so plunder. Monnas wat die hele land leeg koop.
“Ek raak oor die algemeen nie betrokke by bekgevegte op sosiale media nie, maar as ouer van een van die sogenaamde ‘gekoopte’ seuns, wil ek graag die rekord regstel. My seun is nie ‘gekoop’ nie – hy het self besluit om die skuif te maak, en daar is geen voordele (finansieel of andersins) verbonde aan die skuif nie. Hy het inteendeel ‘n beurs opgegee om te skuif, bloot omdat hy glo dat Garsfontein hom ‘n geleentheid kan gee om verder te groei in die sport waarvoor hy lief is wat hopelik kan lei tot verdere geleenthede na skool. Dan wil ek ook net se dat ons groot waardering vir Die Hoerskool Menlopark het en dat ons die positiewe trajek waarop die rugby-program is nogsteeds voluit ondersteun. Hulle doen fantastiese werk en ons het volle vertroue dat sal aanhou groei – dit is ongelukkig nie ‘n oornag-proses nie. Die realiteit is dat ons seun slegs een jaar oor het, en dus besluit het om ‘n radikale skuif te maak ter wille van sy eie toekoms. Albei is fantastiese skole, albei skole het en gaan ‘n bydra lewer tot my seun se ontwikkeling. Hy is, en was, nog nooit te koop nie en besef terdee dat hierdie ‘n kans is wat hy waag in die hoop van beter geleenthede.”
The comment from one of the boys’ father on Facebook👍🏻 I can guarantee you the same goes for the other 2 boys. Don’t jump to conclusions just because you guys hate Garsfontein so much
Neither 1 of these 3 boys were poached. All 3 of them wanted to leave Menlo. Miller de Jager’s Dad commented on a facebook post by the rugby factory and explicitly said that there were no money involved whatsoever in this and his son wanted to move for better opportunities. Garsfontein is just the easiest school at this stage to be made the scapegoat of. Not a word is said about Monnas,DHS, Noordheuwel, Paarl boys,Wynberg…all of these schools recruit and buy boys after grade 10/11 but sure Garsfontein is the bad guy.
Neither 1 of these 3 Menlo boys were approached by the school in fact they did the approaching themselves when they went to Garsfontein to find out if it’d be able for them to move there.
@Rainier (Comment #1)
Recruitment is a broad stroke word. As soon as Garsies said yes to them joining the school, they effectively recruited the boys. You need to ask me if I think they were poached. To that I would answer I do not know.
@Rainier (Comment #1)
I actually think this is one of the very few times Garsfontein didn’t actively recruit these players. The boys perhaps saw the rugby programme at Menlo isn’t going anywhere at the moment and they wanted to opt for playing at a better rugby programme in their final year.
Gapsfontein should be banned for a year- that will stop this
Beet, are you saying the boys were recruited?