When your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, the saying goes.
So, I accept that I am oversimplifying things by blaming our sporting woes, especially the rugby ones, on what goes on in schools.
But this time I believe the dire performances of late from the Springboks can be traced back to what schools rugby has become.
The All Blacks, we all agree, are from a different planet and even if we did do everything right we wouldn’t beat them too many times.
It really is okay to go down to a team like that. Schools that play rugby should, in the first place, be teaching that as a lesson to learn from the game.
There are, however, conditions attached. It’s okay to lose to a better team if: you prepare as well as you can; the management makes it possible for the players to focus on the task at hand; and the players give 100 percent to the cause, in preparation and in the game.
I’m not going to join the howling chorus that has found its voice after last weekend’s hiding, but you have to question the fulfilling of those conditions when it comes to the Boks.
Where do the schools come in? Well, of course, a rugby education, as part of education for life, has to include adherence to those conditions.
But it goes further because, in the first instance, everything that’s taught (in some schools) points to the belief that it isn’t okay to lose - under any circumstances.
From there flows the unethical practices and dodgy behaviour that have become the staple of my ongoing whining about the state of sport in our schools over the last few years.
Two weeks ago I wondered, in this space, what the return on investment was for schools that spend millions on hiring big-name coaches for their first rugby teams.
I got quite a response, and most of it was critical. Some (associated with schools that use top coaches, I presume) argue that it is necessary, and right, because that’s how you win games and winning is very important to those schools.
That’s fine - and I’m sure most of those top professional coaches make sure their teams meet the conditions I have outlined.
The problem, though, arises when those teams don’t win. I suggested that professional coaches are hired to get results and when that is not forthcoming, they are forced to do what it takes to rectify it.
The path taken then isn’t always totally educational.
It’s not just at 1st team level either. When winning’s the dominant value, then sound developmental practices take a back seat. Short-term success dominates and long-term growth is ignored. That’s where our obsession with size and physical dominance was born.
Rugby is a physical game and hapless weaklings are always going to get smashed, but the game’s beauty is that you need more than brutality to succeed.
The best teams have that. Look at the All Blacks, and the Lions Super Rugby team. I’ve watched too many school rugby teams that do not.
South African rugby supporters seem to love leagues, and in the absence of those, rankings. And at school level that means winning lots of games, with this year’s team - who cares about building for the future?
And in the junior age groups, that usually means putting the biggest players in and crushing the opposition.
It’s a tactic that brings success, and it has worked all the way up to national level where the Springboks have won many games through sheer physicality.
Until the other countries combined power with finesse, we all know what happened next.
If I was in charge I’d get my hammer out and start beating the schoolboy (and other) coaches who prefer size to skill into line.
It won’t lead to defeating those other-worldly All Blacks in the short term, but you have to start there.
Independent Media