I’d say a lot of talent is missed at junior levels in all rugby nations due to a lack of size, youth selectors tend to pick the biggest players and I think there’s statistics to show demonstrate that eldest players in any given school year have more chance of being selected by virtue of them having had more time to develop physically. It is certainly the case in football (or soccer to you guys) where the majority of players have birthdays in the September-December months.

Reminds me of American sports where high-school basketball and football (Grid Iron) are taken very seriously and are almost professional. I guess it’s inevitable that Rugby Union will come to this and already we’re seeing huge crowd turnouts to high school rugby matches.

I think if SA Rugby wants to get a grip on this sort of thing there is no point in trying stop the inevitable or trying to reinvent the wheel – we may as well take a look at how the US deals with it and then perhaps take what we can from their ‘system’ and apply it to SA school rugby setup.

I just hope these kids still enjoy and take pleasure in playing rugby….when it gets this serious the fun can quickly evaporate under pressure.

Just another interesting poaching story. In early 2008/2009 Waterkloof toured down in the Cape and played Paarl Gym. Later that same year the fixture was repeated with 2 of the original Paarl boys running out in Waterkloof colours.

The yarpies have no conscience, obviously. Dodgy lot.