Craven Week at a New Venue

It's the second week of July - time for the Craven Week - the 54th Craven Week, the great coming-together of Under-18 provincial teams for three enthusiastic matches in a week. And this year there is a new venue.

The first Craven Week took place in East London in 1964, part of the 75th Jubilee of the South African Rugby Board. It has been played at many venues in South Africa and once in Rhodesia which is now Zimbabwe.

Recently it has become the trend for schools to host the Craven Week - Paul Roos in Stellenbosch in 2015 when it was turning 150. The next year it went to Kearsney College and this year to Paarl Boys' High School, in Afrikaans Hoër Jongenskool Paarl, founded in 1868 and so celebrating its 150th birthday - a great school which has dominated schools rugby in South African in recent years. In South Africa, they were unbeaten in 2015, 2016 and 2017, the year in which they lost to Christchurch Boys' High in Christchurch.

Twenty old boys of Paarl Boys' High have become Springboks, fifth most amongst South African school.

In April the great school hosted an international rugby festival of 10 South African schools and 10 teams from overseas. And now they are hosting Craven Week

Craven Week was held in Paarl in 1987, but not hosted by Boys' High. That year was significant.

In Middelburg in 1978, Toyota publicly announced that if Craven Week did not follow the policy of racial amalgamation that the SA Rugby Board, the Federation and the Association (previously the SA African Rugby Board) had adopted, they would withdraw their sponsorship. The schools refused to budge but in 1980, in Stellenbosch, Dr Danie Craven forced the change and the Federation and the Association sent teams to Craven Week.

In 1987, players of different races played in the same team for the first time at Craven Week, and since then racial mixing of all teams has grown.

The other big change, happened in 1974 when for the first time a South African Schools team was chosen, as has happened every year since then, to Craven's chagrin, for he wasted the Craven Week to be a rugby festival, not a competition and not trials for the national team.

Craven Week Venues

1964: East London

1965: East London

1966: Pretoria

1967: Cape Town

1968: Bloemfontein

1969: Pietermaritzburg

1970: Salisbury - now Harare

1971: Kimberley

1972: Potchefstroom

1973: Stellenbosch

1974: Johannesburg

1975: Pretoria

1976: Wolmaransstad

1977: Oudtshoorn

1978: Middelburg (Transvaal)

1979: East London

1980: Stellenbosch

1981: Worcester

1982: Windhoek

1983: Upington

1984: Bloemfontein

1985: Witbank

1986: Graaff-Reinet

1987: Paarl

1988: Port Elizabeth

1989: Johannesburg

1990: Durban

1991: East London

1992: Pretoria

1993: Secunda

1994: Newcastle

1995: Bloemfontein

1996: Stellenbosch

1997: Kimberley

1998: Vanderbijl Park

1999: George

2000: Port Elizabeth

2001: Rustenburg

2002: Pietermaritzburg

2003: Wellington

2004: Nelspruit

2005: Bloemfontein

2006: Johannesburg

2007: Stellenbosch

2008: Pretoria

2009: East London

2010: Welkom

2011: Kimberley

2012: Port Elizabeth

2013: Polokwane

2014: Middelburg (Mpumalanga)

2015: Paul Roos - Stellenbosch

2016: Kearsney - Durban

2017: St Stithians - Johannesburg

2018: Paarl Boys' High