A feature of the Coca-Cola Under 18 Craven Week, down the years, has been the presence of aficionados \u2013 old timers who go along, year after year because they enjoy the type of rugby played, and because they fancy themselves as spotters of emerging talent.<\/p>\n
At the 50th anniversary of the week in Polokwane this week is someone who is attending his 35th consecutive week and who was, in his playing days, one of the top wings in world rugby.<\/p>\n
Gerrie Germishuys played 20 tests for South Africa between 1974 and 1981 and scored 11 test tries.<\/p>\n
He then became a teacher, and later a lecturer at Goudstad College of Education and then University of Johannesburg (UJ). It\u2019s has been for those two institutions that he has been attending the Craven Week, all these years , running his expert eye over the talent and making suggestions to his colleagues in the recruitment department.<\/p>\n
This may well be his last Craven Week in that capacity \u2013 he retires next year \u2013 but he sees himself attending the week whenever it\u2019s in the vicinity. \u201cI have always loved schoolboy rugby and, although it has changed as professionalism has filtered down into the schools, I enjoy the competitiveness of the games at this level.\u201d<\/p>\n
As someone who was once a \u201cflair\u201d player himself, Germishuys bemoans the fact that the game has become a bit too structured. \u201cI saw a very good wing on Monday, clearly very fast, but his team never got the ball too him once in the game,\u201d he says. \u201cI understand that game plans should be enforced, but why select players like that if you are not playing to your strengths?\u201d<\/p>\n
Germishuys believes the growing trend of taking contact instead of avoiding it is bad for rugby, and it\u2019s one of the reasons why, at an international level, South African teams are unable to set up overlaps the way the Australians and New Zealand sides do.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe pity is that, at this Craven Week, and it\u2019s only day two, I have seen teams that play entertaining running rugby, and players with plenty of ability. I am afraid that their flair gets coached out of them at more senior levels by coaches who adopt a safety-first approach.\u201d
Germishuys still believes that the Coca-Cola Craven Week is the greatest school rugby tournament in the world. \u201cTo have so many good players on display in one place is a feast for rugby-lovers like me. And for the universities and unions, it\u2019s the perfect opportunity to make sure they have enough talent coming through the ranks.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s reassuring to know that tomorrow\u2019s heroes have the heroes of the past, like Gerrie Germishuys, up in the stands, taking note of what they are capable of.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A feature of the Coca-Cola Under 18 Craven Week, down the years, has been the presence of aficionados \u2013 old timers who go along, year after year because they enjoy the type of rugby played, and because they fancy themselves as spotters of emerging talent. At the 50th anniversary of the week in Polokwane this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":240,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}