Select Edition

Northern Northern
Southern Southern
Global Global
NZ NZ

Controversy as school's U15s side run up genuinely ridiculous score in South Africa

By Ian Cameron
Grey College U15s in front of the scoreboard

Famous Springbok rugby nursery Grey College have toppled a South African inter-schools scoring record.

ADVERTISEMENT

The Bloemfontein school’s U15 side ran out 221 points to nil winners in their match with Glenwood on the weekend, but the result has come under fire, with critics asking what such a one sided encounter achieves.

In many school districts around the globe, age grade matches would be called off once one side had opened up a pre-determined points margin – usually in the region of 50 points.

No such rule was applied in this case.

Grey College is one of the most renowned schoolboy rugby powerhouses in South Africa, and has produced multiple Springboks down through the years. This result was one of many one-sided encounters enjoyed by the school.

According to Sport24, over the weekend in “the 19 matches played, Grey scored a total of 1 998 points, conceding 119 in the process, for an average score of 105-6.”

What makes the result more unusual is the fact that the school that took the hammering – Glenwood – are themselves a powerhouse in the province of Kwazulu-Natal. Current Springbok captain, Warren Whiteley, is a former pupil – one of 7 Springboks that the Durban based institution has produced. According to its own website, it “fields thirty teams on a regular basis”.

SA Rugby Mag report that Grey College’s director of rugby Wessel du Plessis has said if he close to the field where the 221 points were scored, he’d have stopped the match.

ADVERTISEMENT

‘I definitely would have stopped that 200-point game had I been in close proximity to the field where they played. After a while, the Glenwood players just stood there and refused to play further. It must have been so humiliating for them and their supporters,’ Du Plessis told Netwerk24.com.

ADVERTISEMENT

Join free

Chasing The Sun | Series 1 Episode 1

Fresh Starts | Episode 2 | Sam Whitelock

Royal Navy Men v Royal Air Force Men | Full Match Replay

Royal Navy Women v Royal Air Force Women | Full Match Replay

Abbie Ward: A Bump in the Road

Aotearoa Rugby Podcast | Episode 9

James Cook | The Big Jim Show | Full Episode

New Zealand victorious in TENSE final | Cathay/HSBC Sevens Day Three Men's Highlights

Trending on RugbyPass

Comments

Join free and tell us what you really think!

Sign up for free
ADVERTISEMENT

Latest Features

Comments on RugbyPass

F
Flankly 13 hours ago
The AI advantage: How the next two Rugby World Cups will be won

If rugby wants to remain interesting in the AI era then it will need to work on changing the rules. AI will reduce the tactical advantage of smart game plans, will neutralize primary attacking weapons, and will move rugby from a being a game of inches to a game of millimetres. It will be about sheer athleticism and technique,about avoiding mistakes, and about referees. Many fans will find that boring. The answer is to add creative degrees of freedom to the game. The 50-22 is an example. But we can have fun inventing others, like the right to add more players for X minutes per game, or the equivalent of the 2-point conversion in American football, the ability to call a 12-player scrum, etc. Not saying these are great ideas, but making the point that the more of these alternatives you allow, the less AI will be able to lock down high-probability strategies. This is not because AI does not have the compute power, but because it has more choices and has less data, or less-specific data. That will take time and debate, but big, positive and immediate impact could be in the area of ref/TMO assistance. The technology is easily good enough today to detect forward passes, not-straight lineouts, offside at breakdown/scrum/lineout, obstruction, early/late tackles, and a lot of other things. WR should be ultra aggressive in doing this, as it will really help in an area in which the game is really struggling. In the long run there needs to be substantial creativity applied to the rules. Without that AI (along with all of the pro innovations) will turn rugby into a bash fest.

24 Go to comments
TRENDING
TRENDING Israel Dagg blasts Crusaders, weighs in on Rob Penney's future Dagg blasts Crusaders, debates Penney's future
Search