Blogs

Hitting the newspapers this week have been stories covering the violence that has occurred in two of the country’s rugby centres over the weekend – one involving unruly spectators crudely armed with a variety of weapons attacking players,...

Did you know that the Western Province Under 16 “Craven Week” team, before their “week” began this year, played a match against Paarl Gym Under 16’s in order to prepare themselves for the “Craven Week”? Guess...

When Craven week was first introduced, Western Province schools decided not to take part in it for they felt that provincial colours, even at junior level, for rugby players still at school was not a very good thing. In the end Province capitulated but...

What is your opinion on leadership? We keep stressing at schools that leadership skills can be taught – but can they? It is, of course, sensible to point out that there are many kinds of leadership: the leader on a battlefield will not necessarily...

I don’t know who coined this phrase; I do know he was a rugby man and he was, I believe, describing what should be one’s ideal emotional state before a game. Very early, in the murky light of a Cape Town Saturday morning, I stood on a wet...

Why do people watch rugby? Some because they love it, others because they fanatically support some particular side for whatever reason -- perhaps because they find it vicariously satisfying to see the side with which they identify beating up their opponents...

Standing on the edge of a rugby field the other afternoon watching a prep schoolmaster/coach teaching his boys (under eleven) some of the arts of rugby, I happened to overhear two young ladies chatting, the one primly announcing to the other, “I...