1 August 2024
(Feature photo: SA Schools’ scrumhalf Shaun Glover on the attack against Linpark, with Kenny O’Connor in support – from the book “Jimeloyo-Ji!”, by Skonk Nicholson and Tony Wiblin)
In 1985, the Maritzburg College 1st XV, captained by Arve Arntzen, put together an unbeaten season: played 18, won 18. They were the highest scoring team in the Red, Black and White‘s rugby history, tallying 609 points at a time when tries were worth four points.
The 1985 team also crossed for a College record 106 tries in 18 games. Using today’s five points for a try, that would have taken their season’s record to 715 points. They conceded one point less than 100.
It wasn’t as if they played a powder puff schedule either. Their fixtures included an early season showdown with Bishops, who were, under the coaching of the legendary Basil Bey, very much the equivalent of College in the Western Cape – dominant and exciting.
Then, there was a last game of the season humdinger – a clash with Grey College on Goldstone’s, with both teams out to protect and secure an unbeaten season.
The Maritzburg College 1st XV of 1985 was an experienced side, Arve Arntzen recalled, with the vast majority of the players in their matric year. There were one or two notable players who would play beyond 1985, including future SA Schools’ players Jeremy Thomson and Brenton Catterall, but it was, otherwise, a settled unit.
College also headed into the season off the back of an excellent 1984 during which they had won 13 of their 14 matches, losing only to a brilliant Queen’s College side, which claimed a hard-fought 15-13 victory on Goldstone’s. From 1981 to 1985, that was the sole defeat College suffered on their home ground.
The connections between the players extended back over many years, though, and, for many of them, they were teammates even before they reached high school.
“We were quite a dominant side when we were at Merchiston,” Arntzen said. “There were quite a few of our guys in our age group that came from Merchiston. In those days, it was u11 ½, and I don’t know how many games we played, but it was only from after the April holidays and we had 405 points for us and four points against us.
“I think in our standard 5 year, we lost one game. In our first year at College, we lost one game, and, if I remember correctly, at u14A and 15A we were unbeaten.”
Overall, Arntzen said, it was a good age group. Some years are stronger than others and 1985’s vintage was right near the top of the tree. “If I also remember correctly, our cricket team was unbeaten, our swimming was good, our athletes were bloody good. It was a good all-round year,” Arntzen reckoned.
Kevin Smith, the team’s fullback, who now serves as the school’s Director of Business, said: “The ’84 team was a big side. We had some really big locks. Arve and I were the heaviest in the ’85 side.” They weighed only 84 kilograms each!
“We were a fit side. People have often asked me what it was about that side. I think everybody in the team, in each position, they owned it. We had a small pack, but they worked in unison. We knew we would never go backwards. Because they were small, they got lower, and they outscrummed everyone, including Grey. They destroyed Grey.”
Another big strength of the team was its coach, Dave Dell, Smith said: “A lot of credit has to go to Dave Dell. He understood us, and he could call us dreadful names – because that was just Dave Dell – but we loved it.
“He knew us backwards. He knew half of us were bloody naughty and were doing things and getting caught, but he never held it against us.”
In looking over the names of the players that ran out for Maritzburg College in 1985, one stands out. As the man who slotted the drop goal that won South Africa the Rugby World Cup for a first time a decade later, Joel Stransky‘s name catches the eye.
Arntzen insisted, though, that College’s approach was not about leaning on their supremely talented flyhalf. They played a 15-man game. If he tried to play it on his own, Arntzen said, he would “remind him he had another 14 okes to join him”.
That was one of the keys to the ’85 team’s success, he reckoned: “We utilised everybody in the team’s strengths. We didn’t rely on ‘heroes’ in the side to win the games because everybody gave equal effort.”
In 1984, Maritzburg College had a bigger pack, and Arntzen played in that side. In ’85, College was small. “But our scrumming was unbelievable,” he said.
And therein lay one of the foundations of College’s dominance. Unlike nowadays, when a team is not allowed to push the opposition more than 1.5 metres back, in 1985 there was no limit.
“In the last game, when we played against Grey College, I think Grey looked at us and said yeah, we’ve got these boys wrapped up. The first scrum I think they went back about 20 metres! ”
“We pushed the scrum machine up and down Goldstone for days,” Arntzen explained, “and that was where I think College lost its dominance in schoolboy rugby because they took those rules away. We were drilled and drilled until we got it right.”
As a lighter pack, too, they were fast about the field. There were no stragglers. The opposition faced eight College forwards in every corner of the field.
It sounds crazy, considering Maritzburg College overwhelmed Bishops 44-0, but they were the underdogs heading into that game. It was their third of three matches at the St Stithians Easter Rugby Festival.
College had begun the festival with a 25-7 victory over King Edward VII (KES) and followed up with a 24-3 defeat of Pretoria Boys High. Bishops, though, played a wonderfully flowing and exciting style of rugby, which attacked space. But there was no inkling that they were about to endure the worst loss in the school’s history.
Kevin Smith recalled: “Everybody said we were going to lose. In the lead-up to the game, it was ‘Whoah, we’re playing in the main game here. This is going to be big’. The feeling before that game, how we warmed up, you could tell. As a coach now, I can tell.”
Arntzen shared his memories of that match: “The year before they had done well and they had added a few hot shot players that had come back, and everyone was talking about Bishops.
“Our coach Dave Dell watched them once or twice before we played them, and he realised that their openside or the blind side flanker was, instead of a covering or backing up play, staying out on the open side. So, once players had moved across the field, the blind side flanker would stay there and then they would run the ball down to the first or second centre and switch direction, and every time they created an overlap. Dave had worked that out and we counteracted it.
“Okay, so we put in some big hits at flyhalf and centre, and then we also left our blind side flanker out on the wing. This plan of theirs had worked like clockwork for most probably a couple of seasons and we basically just hammered them, tackled the daylights out of them, and the whole thing was thrown apart for them. That was when we started scoring tries.”
Kevin Smith remembered: “They had this wing. He ran and he ghosted past people… I got an opportunity to get hold of him on the touchline early on. He was prancing…and I still say it is one of the best tackles I ever made. We took out the linesman and he went into the crowd, and he didn’t run again.”
Bishops also had an outstanding flyhalf, Michael Matolengwe. “Ian Mac [McIntosh] had told us he is the future. He really was a great player,” Arntzen said. “At the first ruck, he ran in. In those days, you rucked people. The whole College pack went over the top of him and that was the end of him. He went off.
“We silenced the critics quite quickly after that. I think, also, it was a bit of a case of we were the underdogs and that didn’t go down too well with most of the guys, and Dave’s realisation of what they were doing and how we managed to counter it.”
Bishops would continue on their winning ways after that record defeat until the end of the season, when they lost their last two matches to Strand and Rondebosch Boys’ High. Two years later, they would also avenge their loss to College, outplaying a loaded team 41-9. Grey College handed that Maritzburg College side their only other loss, and it was a narrow 7-6 defeat.
While they were, for the most part, dominant in Natal, College had to endure a serious challenge from Hilton College on Gillfillan Field. College began well and following an established pattern, they scored a try early, which in previous matches had set them up for comfortable victories.
“I think everybody sort of sat back and thought, well this it, we have another big score coming. But Hilton came back at us with vengeance,” Arntzen said.
“We were trailing for most of the game, if I remember correctly. Towards the end, it was 17-17 – and I don’t take credit for it at all – but I was jumping number four in the lineout, and they kept on holding me down and I went to the ref and said, ‘Ref, if they hold me down and you don’t do something about it, I’m going to hit that guy’.
“Every time my guys got the ball, they were flipping holding me down So, the next lineout was ours, inside their 10-metre line. I called it to myself at number four and they held me down and the ref saw it. He blew and he gave us a penalty and Joel got it over and we won 20-17.
“I always said that was our wake-up call for the season because I remember Dave Dell telling us this as well, ‘there are no hard games and easy games when you are playing for College’. The next game was the hardest game because everybody wanted to beat College. So, I think that was our turning point. We had good results up to then, but that made us wake up, that we could not take our foot off the gas anytime during a game.”
Captaining the 1985 side was rewarding because of how unified the players were, Arntzen said.
“I will never forget playing against KES. I can’t remember who we were watching, but it was one of the other teams, and just after halftime we’d always go and warm up. We’re standing there and I said to the guys, ‘Come, let’s go. Let’s go warm up’, and everybody picked up their bag, and there is a guy standing next to me, a father, and I heard him say, ‘Geez, that’s a disciplined side’.
“There wasn’t a ‘Yeah, I just want to watch this’, and that made it easy to captain them.”
After that, the closest any team in Natal got to College was DHS, who were beaten 18-8 on Van Heerden Field. Later, on Goldstone’s, the Red, Black and White roared to a 33-9 victory over DHS. They also took down, among others, Michaelhouse, Glenwood, Kearsney College, and Rondebosch Boys’ High. All those wins led them to one last, very big game.
Arntzen asked his players if they wanted to face the fearsome Free State powerhouse. They all agreed, it was what they wanted.
“I don’t know how he [Dave Dell] managed it, but he managed to get it organised,” Arntzen said. “In the third term, there were three matches after the July holidays, and the Grey College game was the fourth week after those holidays. To be quite honest, we hadn’t really given it much thought until the week before.
“So, we practiced like normal. The rest of the school started doing athletics, and so the hype was there.”
As the day of the hugely hyped showdown drew nearer, it dawned on the players just how much was at stake. They had set a Maritzburg College record for the most points and tries scored in a season, and while that wasn’t what it was all about, a loss would certainly take some shine off of their outstanding achievements.
Arntzen, in an effort to calm the nerves of his team, asked coach Dave Dell if they could have a braai at Goldstone’s on the Friday evening before the game. He also asked Dell to talk to the team to give them some inspiration.
“He said to us, very short and sweet – we went through the records that we had broken and all the rest, – but he said tomorrow’s game isn’t about if we win. He said we have to win it, otherwise we would go down in the history books as just another side, because we lost. We had to leave it all on the field.”
On the Saturday, College hosted a Family Day. There was no other rugby taking place, although other sports were being played.
Usually, the 1st XV, as was their tradition, would have gone to watch one of the junior teams in action. Instead, Arntzen told his players to spend some time with their families or their girlfriends, go to where they wanted to be.
“I said, ‘I don’t think we should be together the whole morning’, just to try and reduce the nerves a little bit. Anyway, I think it helped. After lunch, we would have our normal get-together and get all our bags and get down to the field. It was tense, but I think everybody managed it quite well, really.”
It wasn’t unusual at the time for Grey College to have every one of their players selected for the Orange Free State Craven Week team. There were, of course, Grey players who were regularly awarded South African Schools’ colours, too. In 1985, Grey had three SA Schools players in their ranks – Frans Cronjé (hooker), Chet Maherry (lock), and Buks Steenkamp (centre).
Maritzburg College had six Natal Schools players – Arve Arntzen, Shaun Glover, Derek Ross, Joel Stransky, Kevin Smith and Kenny O’Connor – with Glover going on to be selected for the SA Schools side. Stransky had been selected for SA Schools in 1984.
“We weren’t intimidated,” Arntzen said. “I think we were winging it.
“I’ve often thought that. Everyone goes on and carries on about the ’85 side and it still happens. I often think we didn’t actually realise what we were achieving at the time.
“Many years later you’re like, ‘Shucks, I wish someone would break that bloody record’, so they won’t carry on about the ’85 side.
The whole season we had just gone out there and done what we do and come out with the results. So, I think we were most probably a quietly confident team, and we did not believe we could lose. I don’t remember thinking if we lost this game how would we feel.
“We were confident in our abilities and, fortunately, we were proved correct.”
Goldstone’s was a sight to behold for the big showdown. It was jam-packed on all sides, down its length and its breadth. Grey and their supporters were out in force.
“It wasn’t that the whole of Grey had come down to play rugby, but they had bussed all of their boys up. I didn’t expect it,” Kevin Smith said. “We got there and suddenly there were all these boys. I don’t know where they stayed, or whether they had travelled overnight. All of their supporters came, and they stood in front of the Kent Pavilion and sang ‘Viva la Grey’. A lot of them turned towards us, and they were singing the song to us.
“It was the last time we ran onto Goldstone’s, so we wanted to hit that field running. But they had done a war cry just before we ran on. Now they were coming off. So, we came screaming onto the field, straight into their crowd. We basically walked onto the field, which wasn’t ideal, ” he said with a laugh.
While College bossed the scrums, they had to have a rethink about their approach, which had been to kick onto the Grey wings and fullback. It worked to a degree against the wings, but fullback Henk Prinsloo punished the home side with massive kicks and counterattacking runs. The first time he touched the ball, he charged 70 metres up the field.
“We stopped kicking on him, and we started running hard,” Smith said.
Grey scored first to take a 4-0 lead, but there was no panic in the College ranks.
“You could feel it, we were getting on top of them. At no stage of the game did I feel we were going to battle,” Smith reckoned.
With the battle up front going the home team’s way, they found a response, with Derek Ross going over for a try. Stransky’s successful conversion kick put the Red, Black and White into the lead. A further try, scored by Shaun Glover sealed a famous 10-4 win and an unbeaten season.
The relationships built up through the years and especially during that unforgettable season continue to this day.
“Today, we all keep in touch with one another, certain people more than others, but if there’s a Maritzburg College function on, it takes about five minutes and the guys that played first team rugby are all standing together. There is still a strong bond,” Arntzen said.
And there still remains a strong reverence for an unforgettable rugby team.
RESULTS
Maritzburg College 25-7 King Edward VII (a)
Maritzburg College 24-3 Pretoria Boys High (a)
Maritzburg College 44-0 Bishops Diocesan College (a)
Maritzburg College 62-3 St Stithians College (h)
Maritzburg College 60-3 Linpark (h)
Maritzburg College 20-17 Hilton College (a)
Maritzburg College 57-0 Voortrekker (a)
Maritzburg College 34-3 Alexandra High (a)
Maritzburg College 70-0 Weston Agricultural College
Maritzburg College 25-6 Michaelhouse
Maritzburg College 25-3 Glenwood (a)
Maritzburg College 33-18 Kearsney College (a)
Maritzburg College 18-8 DHS (a)
Maritzburg College 22-6 Rondebosch Boys High
Maritzburg College 22-6 Glenwood
Maritzburg College 33-9 DHS
Maritzburg College 25-3 Northwood
Maritzburg College 10-4 Grey College
Points For 609, Points Against 99
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