Monday 31 May 2010

Time for some great hockey news

Seventeen players into Inland teams

SEVENTEEN ST CHARLES COLLEGE HOCKEY BOYS received news in the past fortnight that they have been selected to various KZN Inland hockey teams.

The U18A team has Saints, Tuks Khumalo, Uli Fischer and Mzamo Cele, while Gareth Rall, Keagan Davids and Joel Barron (goalie) are into the U18B team.

The U16B squad sees the inclusion of Stuart Armstrong at goalie, and Andrew Darroch, Wiaan Luttig, Pavi Indrajith and Kalin Nundlall.

The U14 teams see Eric de Rauville into the Inland A side, and Tim Kirkman and Marc Knobel into the B side.

And in the Prep School, Inland U13B has Michael Darroch and Luke Barnard, while the U12A sees Brad Sherwood as part of the squad.

Fabulous news hockey boys! Well done! Good luck!

Sadly, Michael Esteves, whose photo is above, is not in any of those squads but this photographic adaptation of him in action is irresistible in this context.

Webmaster | Pietermaritzburg | 2010 05 31

Saturday 29 May 2010

Relaxed day at St Charles

Meeting of old rivals

Friday 28 May 2010

Prep School sports

Inter-House cross-country, football and rugby

Tuesday 25 May 2010

Mini-Comrades

A serious run in the SCC park

Saturday 22 May 2010

Junior Saints have a great day

Interesting day at Kearsney for Seniors

Saturday 15 May 2010

Enjoyable derby with St Alban's

Close results across the board

A VERY PLEASED STEWART BRADFORD, coach of the St Charles College First XV, returned this evening at 9:00pm bringing a victorious team home with him. It was a good campaign with the Saints visiting Pretoria to participate in a derby day against St Alban's College in Lynwood. Describing the main game as "Fantastic!" and "the best game of the season" Bradford reckoned few people expected this to be the visitors' reaction - particularly after the close 18-13 encounter last year at Harwin Road against St Alban's.

What this afternoon's game emphasised is that practice and schooling has paid dividends - particularly for Burton Weakley who took his kicking skills with him - with a vengeance - to the game to slot over three conversions and three penalties - missing one difficult conversion from the touch line.

Played in beautiful, clear Pretoria weather, in front of a crowd with a considerable number of St Charles College parents who travelled to Pretoria in it whose sons are in a wide variety of sides, the game's half-time score was 20-12 and the full-time score 35-22. Tries were scored by Liam O'Connell, James Rae, Shaun McNamara and Sean Searle.

The game saw running rugby which had the sizable crowd on their feet. Probably the move which caused the greatest noise was a play which started on the Saints' 22m with a scrum and, having beaten two defenders, there was a pass from Zam Khumalo to Vincent Potgieter who ran some 60m side-stepping the speedy St Alban's centre in the process, to pass to Matthew Tweddle who drew the defence some 5m in front of the posts and who slipped the ball smoothly to Sean Searle who charged just three steps to score between the posts - running rugby at its most fluent and slick.

St Alban's were tough in defence, bringing quite a few of the players to the field who played last year, some of whom play club rugby for a Blue Bulls' junior side. They scored four tries, one of which was converted.

The hockey Saints (at least at First XI level) had a surprisingly tough day at the office. It happens. Perhaps there was some complacency resulting from the expectation to win. The remainder of the sides performed well with the U16As shining and the U14 sides producing good results.

St Alban's has 560 boys from Grade 8 to 12 - just on 100 more than St Charles College's 470. Thanks St Alban's for a great day and for hosting the Saints from Maritzburg. Well played in all the games, with close results across the board. The U14As, who have so far had an indifferent season, came away with a welcome and well-deserved 12-12 draw. We look forward to hosting St Alban's College to Maritzburg next year. Good luck for the remainder of your season.

And that goes for the Saints too who travel to Botha's Hill next Saturday for a dust-up at Kearsney College.

(Photo below - stock image - Shaun McNamara in action against St David's College last week, with Vincent Potgieter, Sean Searle, Burton Weakley and Andrew Botha in attendance.)

Webmaster | Pietermaritzburg | 2010 05 15

THANKS GO TO OLD BOY, MATTHEW BOOTE (2008), WHO FORWARDED the following article to Head of Sport, Mr Dave Karlsen. It is written by the Indian journalist and commentator, Harsha Bogle – one of the world’s most respected writers and observers of modern sport.

"Watching young international players surrounded by an army of coaches, I have often wondered about the resemblance to a child surrounded by many nannies eager to fulfill his every need. The child grows up healthy and protected but ignorant of the ways of the world. Every time a new situation presents itself, he searches for the latest nanny equivalent. Meanwhile the kid who learned to climb a tree to pluck fruit for himself moves ahead.
In a wonderful, and brief, interview on Cricinfo, Rodney Marsh, who was a tough player and tough coach, says, "The best coaches are the ones who can communicate with a player about what the fault is in their game and get the player to fix the problem. You never forget things if you can work them out for yourself." And by inference, if you keep telling the player what to do to fix his problem, he will never learn to work it out for himself.
In India, and I suspect around the world, we are seeing the mushrooming of the Academy, the game's greatest enemy. Ten-year-old kids are going to Academies of various hues, largely dubious, to learn the forward-defensive stroke and the cover drive. They must learn almost by rote, and therefore not too differently from the way they study history; they are taught about where the front foot should be, about how bat and pad must go together, where the elbow should be, where the toe should point, about how the follow-through must end with the bat over the left shoulder. All perfectly correct, except that they don't learn to hit a ball; instead, they become obedient pupils. It is similar to what happens in school but with one difference. In history you memorise and transfer on to paper to earn a grade. You cannot do that in cricket because a real ball comes at you and you must negotiate it.
And so we end up producing highly skilled players who don't learn to question, who depend on a coach to tell them what to do. I wonder sometimes if that is what befalls fine talents like Ishant Sharma and RP Singh and many like them. Do they learn, as Marsh says, to fix their own problems? Do they rediscover the freedom, and therefore the joy, of trying out different things and seeing what works and what doesn't? Wasim Akram once told me, during a long drive, how he and Waqar Younis would pick cricket balls with different levels of wear and tear and bowl with them in the nets to see what they could achieve. There was no one telling them to do it, they figured it out themselves. So maybe, as Marsh says, the coach communicates the fault and lets the player figure out the solution through practice.
John Buchanan advocated something similar. Marsh and Buchanan come from completely different schools of cricket but seem to converge on this point. Buchanan encouraged players to go to coaches with their solution to the problem, not with the problem itself. It is a powerful thought and not one to be disregarded. The easiest thing to do with a problem is to go to someone and ask for the solution. It is also, as I have discovered with computers, the surest way to ignorance. As Marsh says, "If you don't talk about the game, you've got no hope of getting better."
The process of working it out will lead to mistakes, but far too often in India we don't recognise mistakes as essential steps on the way to learning. A nanny doesn't allow a child to make a mistake, a coach doesn't allow a young cricketer to go wrong in quest of being right. And by making the learning of cricket similar to the learning of history (which, in the right hands, can be really exciting as well), coaches convert a simple game into a difficult, complicated one. It makes sense, though, for if the coach were to present the game as being very simple, he couldn't justify making a living out of teaching it, could he?
I sometimes wonder how many young players we lose by not allowing them to work out their own solutions. And I wonder if we realise how many fine players plateau suddenly because their solution to a problem was to ask a coach."

The Webmaster wrote the following at the beginning of this month to appear as the quotation for the month. It didn't appear because I felt it too long for the quotation: "Like an academic exam in the hall, a match on the field is a time for the candidates to show what they have learnt as they demonstrate the effectiveness of the coach's teaching. Teachers never tell candidates what to write; why then do some coaches think it's fine to shout instructions onto the field of play? When they do, how do they expect their players to learn to think for themselves? Step back and give the players the time and space to prove their worth. After all, it's their game, it's their time to shine. The time for coaches to shine is while they are coaching and their marks are measured in the team's performance."

Webmaster | Pietermaritzburg | 2010 05 16

Saturday 8 May 2010

Welcome St David's

Great derby day at Harwin Road

WE WELCOMED ST DAVID'S MARIST COLLEGE to a day in cloudless Pietermaritzburg where the temperatures rose to a slightly humid 29°C with a cool northerly breeze which made kicks at goal questionable.

This has become an annual fixture and long may it continue. Pietermaritzburg parents hosted the boys from Gauteng. We were delighted to have the Junior Primary boys return for some excitement with their mini-rugby as a curtain-raiser for the First XV - which always entertains the crowd, numbering perhaps as many as 1500 today. The JP youngsters stayed on for the main game which they loved (photo 1 above). Meanwhile, St Charles Prep were away at Thomas More in Pinetown.

The First XV secured their first victory of the season in a game starting at 12:10 with a 21-10 win which saw Burton Weakley have some success with his kicking - which helped the cause somewhat. After a wind-affected, wide, penalty kick, St Charles College pressured the visitors' tryline. The Saints' scrumhalf, Zam Khumalo, tap-kicked the ball from a penalty on the 5m line which he passed to Richard Bromilow who charged for the line. Foiled less than a metre from his objective, he passed the ball to Aaron Caruth who forced his way over - his joy was unbridled (photo 3). Weakley converted (7-0). St David's replied with a very good penalty kick from out wide (7-3). With play back on the St David's line, another scrum saw Khumalo pass to Weakley at flyhalf, who passed the ball to James Rae who scored about 15m in from touch. This was converted by Weakley which took the half-time score to 14-3.

Midway through the second half, just as his twin brother, Johan, did last week, Victor de Beer streaked away from a maul for some 40m with a run-away try (photo 4) which was also converted to take the score to 21-3. The Inanda boys upped the pressure and scored a converted try about 10 minutes from full-time (21-10). With no further scores and with each side holding off the other, St Charles College sealed the victory on 21-10.

On Saints Hockey an hour earlier the St Charles College hockey XI faced a very strong side from Sandton with an enviable reputation and an even more enviable eight Gauteng players in the side into the bargain. It was therefore surprising that the Saints' captain, Gareth Dukes along with the Harwin Road boys, opened the scoring early in the first half having effectively disrupted the well structured play of the visitors. This is not saying that the hosts were more physical than usual - it's just that they took their chances on a player-to-player basis and robbed the visitors of the ball - continuously. This was perhaps best described as a busy game. At the back Jonathan Esteves defended magnificently. (The sequence of shots 2a below shows Jonathan in action sweeping the ball up the field - with his left foot slipping off the carpet, resulting in 2b.) The second half saw a diagonal ball draw the Saints' goalie, Joel Barron, far wide of his goals in an attempt to intercept it along with an attacker - who happened to be extremely fast. The attacker got to the ball first and crossed it to another attacker who had arrived in the D, and who then had an easy strike at goal - in spite of a valliant attempt by Barron to get back to the goal mouth. With the score settled on 1-1 the game ended in what was probably a fair result. We think this was Dukes's 20th goal this season. Thanks for the additional hockey photos, Mr Kevin Rall.

It was great to have hosted St David's - two schools with a similar ethos. Thanks for the games and well played to all the players. Thank you parents for hosting the visitors. We look forward to returning the fixture next year - and to joining St David's at their Twenty20 Festival from 9 to 12 September later this year.

Webmaster | Harwin Road | 2010 05 08

Saturday 1 May 2010

Saints host Pionier

Prep visits the Merchie Mud Rats

ST CHARLES COLLEGE RUGBY hosted the lads from Pionier, Vryheid, with some pick-up games against Hilton College and Maritzburg College. The Prep School travelled to Merchiston for the morning. Thanks for the visit lads. Well played to all the players.

Webmaster | Harwin Road | 2010 05 01

No need now to phone the College

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