10 April 2024
There can be no doubt that, for a young school, rugby is the toughest sport in which to reach the upper levels. Clifton College, at 22 years of age, falls into that category of young schools. Great progress has been made, but there is a still a way to go.
The challenge is that no opposition puts their programme on hold to wait for their opponents to catch up. Therefore, a relative newcomer, like Clifton, needs to progress at a faster rate than the established schools to be able to compete with them.
In the beginning, Clifton’s A-teams played against the B teams of their opposition. It was easier in other sports, like cricket and hockey and water polo, to go head-to-head with KZN’s other all-boys’ schools, but rugby required time. It was about creating a rugby culture within the school, which, during winter, had very quickly established itself as a serious force on the hockey astro.
There have been signs that Clifton is on the right path. Nowadays, they play A teams against A teams, but the results are, sometimes, a little ugly. That’s the thing. It’s about consistency. Clifton, right now, is inconsistent, but there are indicators that progress is being made.
In 2022, the school made some real noise. Their results included an historic win over Kearsney College, plus further victories over St Charles, St David’s Marist Inanda, St Benedict’s, and Parktown. Even when they played Glenwood, at that time still right at the top of the game in KZN, they went down only 10-26.
Based on results, 2023 was a slight step back, but the thing was that Clifton handily beat the teams one expected them to beat, and they were competitive against the more established powers.
Maritzburg College, who enjoyed a particularly good year, beat them 32-5 – a clear-cut win, but not a rout. College, in that same season, also defeated Jeppe, KES, and Pretoria Boys High, whom they beat by 32 in Pretoria and 31 in Pietermaritzburg. They beat Affies by 19. Clifton was not too far off.
With some of their key returning players being sidelined by injuries, 2024 has been an up-and-down season for the Durban boys. They convincingly beat the Durban Development team, but they were soundly trounced by Maritzburg College and Westville Boys’ High.
However, most recently, they beat Northcliff 21-15 at the Saints Sports Festival – and Northcliff took down Parktown Boys’ High this past weekend and pushed St Stithians – who were fresh off a convincing 27-14 victory over St Andrew’s College – all the way before going down 7-12, despite having to shuffle their lineup due to injuries.
Clifton’s Director of Rugby, Grant Bell, a highly respected figure in KZN schools’ rugby, was encouraged by his charges’ showing in Johannesburg and the St Stithians’ game was cause for optimism.
“It was a great game of rugby. We were in it the whole way through,” he said.
“It was a game of opportunities, and they took theirs better than we took ours. On the balance of it, it was 50/50. It was a very close game right up until the very end, which was good.
“It was a proper game of attrition. That’s rugby.”
There were five points in it at the end, but it may have been even closer than that, and maybe it could have tilted Clifton’s way, if not for a stroke of misfortune.
With St Stithians on the attack, one of their players appeared to knock-on from a pick-and-go. The Clifton players saw it and stopped. The one person who counted, who didn’t see it, was the referee. Saints kept playing and went through and scored.
“We were all still very confused about it,” Bell recalled. “The referee consulted the touch judge and came back and awarded the try. Obviously, it wasn’t noticeable. It was one of those things.”
Playing to the whistle can sometimes be a tough lesson to learn, especially when something which should have been obvious to the referee occurs and he misses it. Still, there were a lot of positives to take out of the game.
Much can be achieved with the right attitude and Bell said he was encouraged by the Clifton 1st XV’s mental approach. He explained: “It was really interesting to see how the boys felt about the Saints’ game. It wasn’t a game where they felt they had to limit the scoreline. They sincerely believed that they could have a go. And I appreciated that.
“There were moments. Again, it’s a confidence thing, you have to be more clinical when you have those opportunities, and we weren’t. That was probably the difference between the two teams. I think they’ve got momentum. They’ve had a good season up until now.”
KZN schools roll, Clifton’s Bell a big fan of Glenwood Festival
Bell said one of the major steps forward the Clifton 1st XV has taken is on defence and conceding only 27 points in their two matches at the Saints Sports Festival suggests this is the case.
The challenge, at present, is on attack, he said. That has led to the coaches trying out different players in different positions, trying to find a unit that clicks and functions efficiently.
Participating in festivals is a valuable exercise, which helps teams grow, he added. “Tours are so important. You spend all that time together. You’re facing the same struggles. It’s never easy.”
Reflecting on Clifton’s game against St Stithians, with 10 000 people in the stands, mostly backing the home team, he said some of the Clifton players struggled with the pressure in the early going.
Candidly, he remarked: “At the start of the game, it was a horror show, knock-ons and miskicks. It all came with pressure. They couldn’t handle it.”
However, when St Stithians forced Clifton deep into their territory, Clifton stood strong. “We didn’t concede. That was interesting. We managed to absorb that and get ourselves out. It took us about 10 minutes. Those are the small victories in games, where you look and say we can grow from things like that,” Bell said.
“You are under the pump, because you’re playing against the home team in the main game on the main day. It binds people together. That’s probably the biggest takeaway from the tour.”
And so, Clifton soldiers on – a smaller school and a younger school, slowly but surely making progress, bit by bit, striving for consistency, through every age group, in an effort to become a regular challenger to the established powers, each and every season.
It’s a marathon, not a sprint, Bell said. A rugby culture has to be grown. An objective view, from a distance, reveals a school that is making progress. Consistency remains the biggest challenge, but there is some serious talent moving through the age groups.
Clifton’s u14A team, made up mostly of players who put together a season for the ages as the Prep 1st XV in 2023, has been extremely competitive this season, losing by two points to Maritzburg College and beating Westville by the same margin, and that’s despite losing some of their stars to hockey.
The future is bright, but there is still a lot of work to be done. Don’t sleep on Clifton.
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