South Africa runs the biggest schoolboy rugby scene in the world, but it is scattered across dozens of school and union websites, so I have pulled the popular events into one place.
The new Schoolboy Rugby Calendar covers the whole year in four parts. The Easter festivals like Wildeklawer, Kearsney, St John’s, KES, St Stithians and the Pretoria Boys’ High festival. The great traditional derbies, from Grey College against Affies and the Paarl derbies to Dale against Selborne, Maritzburg College against Hilton and the Cape Town interschools. And the FNB Youth Weeks in June and July, topped by the famous U18 Craven Week.
You can filter by the type of event, the time of year, the province, or your own school. Pick your school and leave the rest on Any, and it shows the festivals and derbies that school is known to feature in. Each event tells you where to watch, which is mostly SuperSport Schools on DStv channel 216 and the app, plus an honest note that dates and host venues are confirmed nearer the time.
It is an evergreen guide rather than a live fixture list, because schoolboy dates move every year, so each event is anchored on the month it usually runs in with a link through to the official site for the exact date.
My learners from Limpopo play with just as much heart as any Grey College or Paarl boy, but you would not know it from the attention those schools get at the big festivals. This calendar is a good start, and I would love to see it grow to include more of the smaller northern schools that never make the highlight reels.
Thanks Lerato, that is exactly the kind of nudge I want. You are right that the northern schools get a fraction of the limelight, and that is more about where the cameras point than where the rugby is.
Send me a handful of Limpopo schools and the festivals or derbies they actually play in, and I will work them in. Keen to push this past the usual big names.
Yoh Daniel, this is lekker work, putting all those festivals in one spot saves people hours of clicking through twenty school sites. And sharp to Lerato for that nudge about the northern schools, because she is spot on, the cameras follow the money and the old names, not where the talent actually is.
Here in Soweto I see the same thing with township rugby, boys with serious skill but no festival invite and no highlight reel, so the scouts never come. A calendar like this is more than a schedule, it is exposure. Maybe down the line you add a small section for township and rural sides that play friendlies and local derbies, even just listing them puts them on the map.
How are you sourcing the fixtures, straight from the schools or is there one union feed you can lean on?
Good to see someone has finally put this in one spot, because come Easter I’m forever chasing fixtures across a dozen school sites. Down here in the Cape you can’t move at festival time, Paarl Boys and Boishaai going at it is proper theatre, and Wildeklawer up in Kimberley is the real measuring stick if you ask me. Lerato is dead right about the cameras though, the talent is everywhere, it just doesn’t all sit at the famous schools. Some of the best players I ever watched came from little dorpie sides nobody bothered to film.
One thing Daniel, if you can swing it, a way to filter by province or by date would save us ooms a lot of squinting on the phone. My eyes aren’t what they were.
And put the kick off times in if the schools list them, nothing worse than rocking up with the chops and coals only to find the big game finished an hour ago. Lekker work, I’ll be using this.