The friendly city of Gqeberha will see two brother schools Grey High and Grey College battle it out in the Premier Interschools on Saturday, July 29. The rivalry between these two schools has been in existence since 1929.
Grey College is having one of those seasons again where it seems they are unstoppable and that only a miracle can prevent them from closing down the season unbeaten. They swept away most opposition but had a fight on their hands against Outeniqua in George before eventually overcoming the strong Kwagga side by two points. In the rest of their encounters, they rarely had to move into top gear to overcome their opponents and it seems their unbeaten season is well underway.
Grey High School had an up-and-down season having played 15 games, winning eight, losing six and drawing one. This is not up to their usual standard and they would love to rectify their season by upsetting the Grey Bloem juggernaut on its quest to an unbeaten season.
Grey High and Grey College both have the same benefactor in Sir George Grey, Governor of the Cape Colony from 5 December 1854 to 15 August 1861. He founded Grey College in Bloemfontein in 1855 and Grey High School in Port Elizabeth in 1856.
During Grey's first tenure as Governor of New Zealand, he was Knighted as Commander of the Order of the Bath (1848). Grey gave land for the establishment of Auckland Grammar School in Newmarket in Auckland in 1850. The school was officially recognised as an educational establishment in 1868 through the Auckland Grammar School Appropriation Act of the Provincial Government. Auckland Grammar school also became the school in New Zealand that produced the most All Black rugby players, much in the same mould as Grey College has become the rugby factory for Springbok rugby players in South Africa.
Grey High School from Port Elizabeth first took the initiative with an inland tour in 1929 that started off with them playing St Andrews in Grahamstown and working their way up north to Bloemfontein. There they played their brother school for the first time and lost 0 -16. They invited Grey College to come down to PE the following year and the Bloemfontein Boys dually accepted and in 1930 they undertook their first tour to Port Elizabeth.
In a closely contested match the boys from Bloemfontein again triumphed 9-7. For some unknown reason lost in the midst of time, the two schools took another 23 years before they played each other again. In 1953 Grey PE toured to Bloemfontein and lost 13-3. It took another ten years for the two Greys to square up again and the 1963 game ended in a draw 8-8, while the 1968 game was also a draw. The 1972 match introduced the first unbroken sequence of matches that continues until this day.
In all that time there were two more draws, in 1973 and 1990. Grey PE won their first match against their Bloemfontein brothers in 1976 at the anniversary of the tenth meeting between the two teams. On a day of high drama on the Philip Field at Grey PE, Robbie Logan slotted a last minute penalty for Grey High to emerge as 13-12 winners. Since then, Grey High has only been on the winning side a further seven times with their last win coming in 2014, just showing the dominance that their counterparts from Bloemfontein have in the Derbies.