How significant is the World Schools Festival really?
Is the World Schools Festival really such a prestigious event as their PR wants us to believe?
I personally don’t think so at all. To pitch most of South Africa’s best rugby schools against the best that the rest of the world is a very good and noble idea, but then you need to get the best of the rest of the world to come and face-up against the South African teams.
The idea was always to get the best possible schools from outside of our borders to come and face the pride of our schoolboy system. The idea belonged to former Paarl Boys’ High coach, Sean Erasmus. He was hoping to leave a legacy behind after leaving Boishaai after their 150th celebrations to join the Lions.
Already last year the communication from the marketing agency that was appointed to help organise the event, Carinat Sports Marketing of Hong Kong, claimed that the idea for the festival was that of their consultant and former Springbok coach Heyneke Meyer.
This year they are saying that Carinat owner, Jon Phelps, is the founder of the World Schools Festival. It was certainly not his idea and it could only be guessed what happened behind closed doors during Phelps’ last few meeting with Paarl Boys’ High.
After the first two days of the second edition of the festival at Paul Roos Gimnasium, the Rest of the World contingent only managed to win one of the ten matches thus far. And this victory was achieved by the World Schools XV which consists bar three Italian players out of South African players which are on SA Rugby’s watch list. Not so worldly after all.
The South African teams are leading the “Ryder Cup” style of competition by 20 points to 2 and outscored their opposition at an average score of 46-23 per match. The South African teams scored 461 points to the 230 that were scored against them. Last year the South African teams’ only lost twice in the 20 matches during the festival.
At this current rate, the World Schools Festival won’t survive after next year’s event at Affies. And it is not the host schools Paarl Boishaai, Paul Roos Gimnasium and Affies who are to blame for this fact.
If you take the World Schools XV’s victory of 76-29 over the Western Province Invitational side out of the mix it will rather be a Ryder Cup-style competition if the likes of Tiger Woods, Dustin Johnson and Rory McIlroy were taking on your regular weekend golfer in the Real McCoy.
The Afrikaanse Hoër Seunskool of Pretoria or Affies as they are affectionately known as are having their centenary celebrations next year. The plan is that the World Schools Festival will be one of the headline events during their celebrations.
Looking at this year’s festival they might need to reconsider if the World Schools Festival is worthy of headlining their celebrations. Next year’s South African school holidays after the first term is just over two weeks long and the annual Noord/Suid tournament which is at this moment a much more prestigious and marketable event will also be held in Pretoria. All of Affies, Grey College, Paarl Gimnasium, Monument and Boland Landbou was in action in both of these events this year. 
If Affies want to make sure that this is a prestigious event they will have to take action themselves to make it happen. Get the five schools from New Zealand that will feature at least in their Top 10 schools teams for 2020.
Out of the four attending New Zealand schools in Stellenbosch, they’ve only produced two New Zealand Schools players in 2018. They were Louie Chapman (Christchurch Boys’ High) and Tyrone Thompson (Napier Boys’ High).
The “ten” South African schools in attendance produced 13 of the players in last year’s SA Schools’ team. Another player Keke Morabe of Welkom Gimnasium is playing for the World Schools XV.
The other five international positions should be made of British private schools. The invitation sides that are just thrown together and get to meet each other a day or two before taking on some of our best school outfits is an insult to our rugby as well as not educational to kids who have front-up in these match-ups.
I do however believe that both the South African kids and overseas children attending the festival learn a lot from the experience of attending such a festival, just not on the rugby field.
It is clear that people are voting with their feet as the stands were mostly empty during the two openings day of this year’s event. It can be expected that more people will flood through the gates of the Markotter Stadium on Saturday, but it won’t be to see if the South African team can pull it through, but rather see them smash hapless opposition to pieces.
Results – World Schools Festival 2019
