Back in the day. Then-Swartland scrumhalf Keegan Johannes clears the ball upfield from loose play
in his side’s match against Aliwal North at TSRF 2016. (photo courtesy of Brakkies Sport Fotos)
It has been said that for evil men to accomplish their purpose it is only necessary that good men should do nothing. (Reverend Charles Aked, c. 1920)
This quotation only serves as part of the motivation for the following article, which outlines the latest phase in the recurrent saga of the poaching of local coloured players by the usual suspects up in the North Vaal area.
The course of events, confirmed by people involved only in this instance, bear such striking similarities to at least one earlier case that no reasonable person can be left in any doubt about their veracity.
While the essential details may be the same as in previous years, in the current case more than just the basic outline is fresh in the memory of those involved. As such, it makes for rather unsettling reading and ought to embarrass, even disturb, anyone of sound moral fibre.
Let’s begin.
2016 and Garsfontein decide it’s time to replenish its supply of coloured Under 18 rugby players via the efforts of one man – hereafter referred to as Mr G – with a view to maintaining their flagship team’s profile for the coming season.
Their focus falls squarely on Swartland 1st XV scrumhalf Keegan Johannes, whose race seems to mean more to them than his abilities. A Boland Academy cap, Keegan wasn’t deemed good enough to oust either Rick Jordaan of Klein Nederburg, who incidentally played flyhalf until converted to number 9 in a despairing move in 2015, or Stellenbosch’s Hanreco van Zyl from the Craven Week squad. Keep this in mind: it’s relevant further on.
After much tugging both by the Tshwane blokes and the Rockies, particularly by the latter’s frustrated sports organizer Bertie Gerber, the decision to leave for points north was taken two days before the start of the first term this year.
Several people were devastated to see Keegan go – the school had invested an estimated R 40 000 in him over the years – plus, after protracted wrangling, the lad’s father had agreed that he would stay in Malmesbury, among other reasons because the dad wanted to watch his son play in his final year at school.
But let’s leave Keegan’s story for a while and consider Mr G’s next target. Dawson Humphreys – also coloured, but of humble circumstances – was a bit-part loose forward in 2016’s very successful 1st XV.
He and his mother were visited on several occasions in recent years by Mr G, the most recent being the middle week of January, when he was accompanied by an agent whom we’ll call Mr H.
Unfortunately, in the course of establishing his credibility during that lengthy period, Mr G claimed, inter alia, that he was on such good terms with members of the Western Province high schools rugby fraternity that, for example, if he felt like signing a player currently enrolled at a prominent Premier A school, he could just sit down with the player’s current coach across a table and the deal would be dome.
Oops. When word of this comment reached – as was inevitable – that local coach, he was, let’s say, extremely unhappy. More accurately, he went ballistic. Although he admitted to having met Mr G, the sum total of their acquaintance was currently, and for the foreseeable century, that their teams regrettably attended the same festivals.
This whole process sounds a bit familiar, right ? Very observant, it is exactly the same technique used by Waterkloof to lure Duncan Matthews there a few years ago, right down to getting a recruit who was already up there to phone his wavering buddy in Malmesbury.
In that case, it was ex-Hugenote prop Dayan van der Westhuizen, renowned for putting a racially-abusive opponent on a lengthy liquid diet, who persuaded Matthews to make the move.
Unfortunately, the phone call didn’t pan out as hoped this time for two reasons.
Firstly, in order for it to have any ring of authenticity, the newly-moved player needed to have been in Pretoria long enough to be able to persuade his uncertain friend just how wonderful everything was. In other words, it could only really have worked when the inland schools opened a week earlier, which is not the case anymore.
Secondly, Johannes and Humphreys are such good friends already that the one didn’t need to be asked to chat to the other. Humphreys learnt within days that Johannes had found hostel life at Garsfontein unbearable and had been shunted off to stay with someone else for the time being – hardly a glowing recommendation !
Johannes also ruefully noted that his smooth track into national schoolboy fame – he had been told he wouldn’t have to attend the early rounds of Craven Week trials at the Bulls – was far from guaranteed.
Forget the trials, his 1st XV position at Garsfontein was under threat, not only from the 2016 bench warmer – who was denied game time by the presence of Embrose Papier, ironically also poached from Swartland – but also from a player who had once played junior rugby for a top-tier WP school at age-group level, but had ended up at Garsfontein.
Back to Malmesbury. Well aware of the furore surrounding his future, Dawson, whose mother was also less than enamoured with the whole affair, reported the last visit to the headmaster the following morning. The headmaster, barely two weeks in the post, phoned Mr G to confront him, tell him to call a halt to Project Humphreys and meet him for coffee.
Here comes the crux of the story. Mr G turned down the proposed meeting and denied that he had even been in Malmesbury the previous evening – but had been in his office in Pretoria or whatever they call the place nowadays.
The key word here is LIE. At best he was lying to the headmaster, which he (Mr G) would doubtless have regarded as being little more than collateral damage in the greater scheme of things. However, at worst, he was calling the mother and her son liars, which promptly snapped any sort of trust that might have been established over the long months of courtship between the two parties like a dry jacaranda twig.
As if the previous paragraph isn’t revealing enough of Mr G’s business ethics, he repeated this untruth to Gerber a few hours later, sarcastically noting that the previous evening’s visit would have been totally pointless since, had he wanted Humphreys that much, the youngster would have been at Garsfontein ages ago.
The purpose of Gerber’s phone call had actually been to get the name of Mr H. Having ascertained, via contacts, the name of the agency whom Mr H was purportedly representing in this instance, he phoned them to complain about the man’s role and was treated to an angry denial regarding the agency’s involvement, who were so incensed that they threatened to go the legal route.
Whether they were denying that Mr H worked for them or that he was working with Mr G with their blessing is frankly irrelevant. The list of lies had grown: either Mr H or the man on the phone had lied about Mr H’s employment details.
Thought you’d heard it all ? Not yet, Tibet, the best comes last !
When Gerber, who incidentally doubles as the school’s marketing manager, phoned Garsfontein last year to complain about the persistent courting of the school’s players, he was put through to someone who claimed to be a deputy principal, who promptly and unequivocally denied that the school was involved in any such activity – yeah, right, and rabbits are carnivores – but said that he “would look into the matter and get back to him”.
Fortunately Gerber didn’t hold his breath or Swartland might have lost more than just a player.
There is a happy ending…this time. Having been struck by Swartland’s investment in him primarily as a learner and secondly as a sportsman, Humphreys has decided to finish his otherwise pleasant school career in Malmesbury.
It’s not a crime to poach players, but that doesn’t stop it from being wrong, at least insofar as the resulting separation puts the parent-child relationship under unnecessary strain. Let’s hope that this turns out to be a Pyrrhic victory for the North Vaal school, that they end up losing more (friends, credibility) than they win (by getting the player and winning a few matches).
Ultimately, the only people who can stop it in its tracks are youngsters who are forewarned.
It’s a crying shame that schools unfairly accused of player-poaching – such as KES (and I was obliged to apologise for suggesting their guilt in this regard) – continue to bear the undeserved stigma of such imappropriate behaviour. Waterkloof themselves have, over the last few years, been so completely rehabilitated that now even Affies are prepared to play them annually.
I’ll leave you with a multiple-choice question :
Everything I did, I did for you – the dying words of Burton (Matthew Rauch) to his employer Kai Proctor (Ulrich Thomsen) in Series 4 Episode 8 of Banshee.
In which of the following scenarios can you best imagine Mr G uttering the above words ?
(a) Addressing a youngster he had poached at the end of his school career.
(b) Addressing the parents of the disillusioned youngster after his expectations have amounted to nothing.
(c) While patting the headmaster or 1st XV coach on the back at the end of the season.
(d) When looking at himself smugly in the mirror one morning.
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