Schools Rugby Has National Rankings For Every Age Group.
The answer to having a World Cup Rugby winning team is to make sure you have a strong grass roots foundation feeding through the junior ranks right up to the senior levels. It is not by chance that South Africa sits at the top of the rugby world rankings and has taken generations to get to this point. South African Rugby has got this right and is growing the sport increasing the player numbers through a professional mindset.
You start to realise how fragile the sport of rugby is in the UK when school boy rugby in South Africa is generating more revenue than the professional clubs. The difference is passion and the love for the sport with weekend matches attracting thousands of spectators to each game.
The Paarl schools derby is the biggest game in SA with crowds of up to 30 000.
The matches are televised on television each weekend with old boys from the various schools tuning in from around the world. The schools do not just rely on sponsorships of which there are many, but also the generosity of the old boys who donate bucket loads of cash each year. They would like to see their schools be successful and happily donate so the school can have the latest and best training equipment plus a host of top notch coaches covering all specialist positions professional teams have. These coaches are earing on a par salaries that professional clubs are offering so that coaching pool is growing as well.
When I played rugby it just turned professional as I was bowing out of the sport ad we only had 1 coach. We never had a fitness coach, nutritionist. defense or attack coaches ad basically covered all of this amongst ourselves. This is crazy and scary to think schools are paying for all of these professionals to help the grass roots kids from 13 years of age right up until they are 18.
The match day crowds can be as much as 30 000 spectators and not surprisingly the schools generate huge revenue from catering these events. Back in the day when I played we would get around 4000 spectators on average, but this is way bigger today and becomes a day out for may sporting fans watching all the various age groups.
Not every player will be making the cut and turning professional, but many will be poached by professional clubs around the world. This is a conveyor belt producing 3000 top players each year who are ready for the professional stage having lived under those standards for 5 years.
The teams are becoming brands in their own right and the more wins a team can muster the bigger the payout from streaming services and sponsors. The teams no longer bus it around the country and are flying as the demand is to see who is the strongest school team nationally. The local derby's between neighboring schools are still the biggest streams when it comes to viewer numbers each weekend.
One can only imagine what the national team will look like in 5 or 10 years time as there will be so may players contesting each position. The grass roots of rugby was always seen as club rugby and never down at school boy level so things have definitely changed over the last decade.