09/07/2025
Craven Week.....
What is the difference between the Unions and why the scores we have seen after all the teams have played their first games.
In the past this was seen as the cream of the crop of SA school boys rugby players, but with technology and several school tournaments during the year does it still have that impact, we now know of many Springboks that never played Craven Week that still made it at the end. Yet it is still a very pristine competition and an Massive Honor to represent your Union at the Craven Week.
Lets get to the point why do we such close scores and why do me see the big scores as well. It can broken into 3 aspects: Schools that the players come from, Coaches at the Schools, Conditioning.
Schools the Players come from: They bigger schools are generally in the bigger unions (WP,Lions, Free State, Bulls, Sharks) and then they have funds available in order to buy players or they just attract better players due to the status of the school.
Coaches at the Schools: as in the first point the bigger schools have full time and professional coaches where in the case of the smaller schools its mostly only the teachers that coach and the school is then lucky if the teacher have the know how and experience (Not all the best players make the best coaches, and not all the best coaches can work with teens).
Conditioning: as with point 1 and 2 the same is an trend in this area but lets be honest any player can work on this even if you are not in a big school or don't have a gym this is no excuse, if you can use your body weight you can get great conditioning. You don't need money to get to a gym if you can do push ups, sit ups, pull ups, squat jumps and run hills just saying. Look at how the Jamaican Sprinters train because they did not have any of those equipment yet we know how great they are.
In conclusion lets have a look at WP vs Boland of yesterday, for the first 20 min Boland stood their ground and then WP just started getting momentum. Then look at Free State vs SWD, where SWD is a very Small union as well and won by one point.
It came down to condoning of the players and also the coaching the players get at school level each player knows his job and responsibility on the pitch and they can trust the systems, they can trust the player on the inside and they have know they can win because its not the first time they play against the big school players.
We can expect the winning margin to get closer as the years go by because of all the factors getting more competitive but its your responsibility as an player to work on your conditioning not just at school but during the holidays and during the off season.
Let get moving............. improve that conditioning
