{"id":9592,"date":"2021-08-25T14:05:57","date_gmt":"2021-08-25T14:05:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rugby.supersportschools.com\/sa-rugby-youth-weeks-for-2021-cancelled\/"},"modified":"2021-08-25T14:05:57","modified_gmt":"2021-08-25T14:05:57","slug":"sa-rugby-youth-weeks-for-2021-cancelled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/?p=9592","title":{"rendered":"SA Rugby Youth Weeks for 2021 cancelled"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"NewsGThe 2021 SA Rugby Youth Week tournaments have been cancelled in light of the current challenges and uncertainties regarding the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa, SA Rugby announced on Wednesday.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jurie Roux, CEO of SA Rugby, said that none of the national schools tournaments \u2013 for U13, U16, U18, Academy Week and LSEN teams for boys, as well as the U16 and U18 national weeks for girls \u2013 will take place this year.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis decision, while very unfortunate as we really love to see our best age-group players in action, follows careful consideration of our learnings during the last few months, during which SA Rugby delivered a number of international tournaments and competitions during a local pandemic,\u201d said Roux.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis included the Castle Lager Lions Series, two Tests against Argentina, Springbok Women\u2019s Tests, and the U20 International Series. Our decision to suspend the Youth Weeks for 2021 also follows feedback from the provincial unions \u2013 who have experience on the ground of delivering Covid-19 rugby matches.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The South African Schools Rugby Association (SASRA) endorsed the decision.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhile it\u2019s bitterly disappointing that the Youth Weeks had to be cancelled again this year, the bigger picture is the welfare of our players and other factors that we can\u2019t disregard, including academics. We are approaching the year-end exams, which are very important, especially for our matric learners,\u201d said No\u00ebl Ingle, Chairman of SASRA.<\/span><\/p>\n

Roux pointed to the need to keep the current COVID strategies in place: \u201cWe at SA Rugby are not near to relaxing our COVID-19 testing strategies to ensure we best mitigate the spread of the virus within the competitions and tournaments we manage.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn order for any participating team to safely compete at a tournament such as the Youth Weeks, the same considerations apply without any negotiations to participants safety and wellbeing, to mitigate the potential of transferring the virus. This includes testing, a hard bubble, integrity of tournaments and matches and the very real aspect of finance.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Roux said matches between U18 sides that had already been selected could continue, but only if staged under the auspices of the respective host provincial union, which would include enforcing the same return to play protocols being adopted at Carling Currie Cup Premier and First Division, and U20 Championship level.<\/span><\/p>\n

SA Rugby also urged all stakeholders to take great care when organising or participating in any festivals, tournaments or weeks currently being planned for.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe are cautioning stakeholders on the participation of any other schools tournaments, festivals and multi-day events because of the logistical challenge of a non-provincial union entity managing COVID-19 at a tournament, the administering and costs of testing players and the potential numbers that would participate at a festival versus what is allowed as per the government Gazette,\u201d said Roux, who added that the focus should now move onto hosting successful events in 2022.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe must now focus on wrapping up the 2021 season in the midst of the pandemic, and continue planning for 2022 where hopefully we would be able to establish and delivery Youth Weeks tournaments along with all other SA Rugby tournaments and competitions properties,\u201d Roux concluded.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 2021 SA Rugby Youth Week tournaments have been cancelled in light of the current challenges and uncertainties regarding the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa, SA Rugby announced on Wednesday. Jurie Roux, CEO of SA Rugby, said that none of the national schools tournaments \u2013 for U13, U16, U18, Academy Week and LSEN teams for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9591,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9592","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\/9592","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=9592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}