Affies vs Pretoria Boys High Overview
Affies vs Pretoria Boys High Overview
05 Aug 2014 • 492 views
Historic overview
A rivalry that dates back 91 years and is one of the great Interschools events on the local South African schoolboy rugby calendar once again takes place on Saturday 9 August 2014 when Affies and Pretoria Boys high meet.
The two teams first played in 1923 after Affies was formed in 1920 from the original Pretoria Boys High. They played each other three times in that first year with the first match seen as the “official” interschools game which Boys High won. The Pretoria News reported that year:
“A Second League Rugby football match on Saturday between the Boys’ High School and Afrikaans High School provided by far the best football fare of the afternoon and the greatest excitement. Both schools had brought along bands of supporters. The High School particularly being strong in school cries and football songs.
As an exhibition of football the game was an object lesson to the Grand Challenge game that came later, for both schools displayed a control of their movements which the senior game lacked. From start to finish the football was waged at a great pace“
The first few years were dominated by Boys High wins and Affies had to wait another 9 years to record their first Interschools win. The Candies won most of those earlier years’ encounters with Affies interspersing with some wins of their own. The two did not play in 1944 due to the Second World War and again in 1957 because of the great flu epidemic. The 50th game was played in 1956 and Pretoria Boys won that encounter much to their delight after a three year losing streak.
From the seventies Affies started to dominate the encounters and catch up on the total wins. During one unbelievable long spell from 1986 to 2002 Boys High could not win one game and lost 18 out of 19 games played with one solitary draw over the span of 17 years. They won the big one though! In 2005 the 100th game between these two great schools was played and Pretoria Boys High won that epic battle 25-21.
Affies again took control from 2009 and have up to date won all 7 encounters the last 5 years. In total they have played 110 games of which Affies won 60, Pretoria Boys High 41 with 9 draws.
Results through the years
1923: Pretoria Boys High won 6-3, Pretoria Boys High won 4-3, Affies won 9-0
1924: Pretoria Boys High won 3-0, Pretoria Boys High won 11-3, Draw 3-3
1925: Pretoria Boys High won 14-6, Pretoria Boys High won 14-9
1926: Pretoria Boys High won 7-0, Pretoria Boys High won 6-5
1927: Pretoria Boys High won 6-5
1928: Draw 0-0
1929: Pretoria Boys High won 3-0
1930: Draw 3-3, Pretoria Boys High won 11-4
1931: Draw 3-3, Pretoria Boys High won 7-6
1932: Affies won 8-0, Affies won 10-0, Pretoria Boys High won 9-6
1933: Draw 0-0
1934: Pretoria Boys High won 11-3
1935: Pretoria Boys High won 11-9
1936: Affies won 15-3, Pretoria Boys High won 3-0
1937: Affies won 11-0, Affies won 11-3
1938: Pretoria Boys High won 11-3, Pretoria Boys High won 6-0
1939: Affies won 8-0
1940: Affies won 6-5
1941: Draw 6-6
1942: Pretoria Boys High won 13-3
1943: Pretoria Boys High won 19-0
1944 – No match
1945: Pretoria Boys High won 8-5
1946: Pretoria Boys High won 3-0
1947: Pretoria Boys High won 15-4
1948: Affies won 11-0
1949: Pretoria Boys High won 6-0
1950: Pretoria Boys High won 6-3, Affies won 11-6
1951: Affies won 6-0, Affies won 11-6
1952: Draw 3-3, Affies won 8-5
1953: Affies won 9-0, Pretoria Boys High won 9-3
1954: Affies won 8-0
1955: Affies won 12-3
1956: Pretoria Boys High won 10-6
1957 – No match
1958: Affies won 6-3
1959: Pretoria Boys High won 11-6
1960: Pretoria Boys High won 14-11
1961: Affies won 15-6
1962: Pretoria Boys High won 8-5
1963: Affies won 6-5
1964: Affies won 8-6
1965: Pretoria Boys High won 10-8
1966: Affies won 16-11
1967: Pretoria Boys High won 15-12
1968: Pretoria Boys High won 14-13
1969: Affies won 22-5
1970: Affies won 33-3
1971: Pretoria Boys High won 11-9
1972: Affies won 10-9
1973: Affies won 15-3
1974: Affies won 6-0
1975: Affies won 23-9
1976: Pretoria Boys High won 19-9
1977: Affies won 18-7
1978: Affies won 36-3
1979: Pretoria Boys High won 13-9
1980: Affies won 16-3
1981: Affies won 16-6
1982: Pretoria Boys High won 17-10
1983: Affies won : Affies won 12-6
1984: Affies won 22-6
1985: Pretoria Boys High won 12-9
1986: Affies won 19-12
1987: Affies won 13-10
1988: Affies won 13-3
1989: Affies won 16-15
1990: Affies won 17-9
1991: Affies won 28-3
1992: Affies won 19-10
1993: Affies won 27-9
1994: Affies won 19-3
1995: Affies won 30-22
1996: Affies won 62-13
1997: Affies won 29-12
1998: Affies won 49-0, Draw 21-21
1999: Affies won 31-27, Affies won 30-11
2000: Affies won 32-11
2001: Affies won 24-17
2002: Affies won 21-6
2003: Pretoria Boys High won 18-3
2004: Affies won 34-24
2005: Pretoria Boys High won 25-21
2006: Affies won 27-17
2007: Draw 20-20
2008: Pretoria Boys High won 34-30
2009; Affies won 20-15
2010: Affies won 38-3
2011: Affies won 26-10 and 44-0
2012: Affies won 34-11 and 36-20
2013: Affies won 50-12
The 2014 Season
Affies got off to the worst possible start this season when their final trial matches had to be postponed due to rain and wet fields. Coach Sakkie vd Walt went in cold against Helpmekaar for their first match, not really having tested his best combinations as yet. Affies managed to win the match 36-24. Their next match against a resurgent Waterkloof exposed the lack of preparation when they did try different combinations and the Klofies ran out convincing winners at 38-21. They then travelled to the Kearsney Easter Festival to play three powerhouse teams in Selborne, Monument and HTS Middelburg. They managed a very good win against Selborne 34-12, but came unstuck against the latter two losing both matches. A week later they came up against fellow No 1 contenders of 2013 Paarl Gymnasium in a much anticipated match at Kimberley’s Wildeklawer festival. The boys from Pretoria were blown off the park by a very powerful Paarl outfit that outmuscled them upfront and outran them in the backs. The Paarl team won comfortably 40-7. It was back to the drawing board for Sakkie and his team and to their credit they came back two days later and won against fellow top 10 contenders Oakdale 21-10. That showed this 2014 Affies team might not always fire on all their cylinders, but they do have big hearts and a fighting spirit.
After the tough Wildeklawer competition they had to face yet another old foe in Grey College. In a great game of schoolboy rugby the Boys from Bloem edged out a detrmined Affies team 42-31. Affies seemed to get their season back on track with 4 wins on the trot against KES, Jeppe, Centurion and Eldoraigne. They then had to travel down to Maritzburg and had to face a local College team on Goldstones who had a bone to pick with them. The College boys have not beaten Affies in more than 5 years and they surprised the lads from Pretoria with their direct play and eventually came out winners 37-10. If one defeat to a KZN team was not enough for the boys from blue bull country, one week later Glenwood High traveled up to Pretoria and promptly went on to beat Affies on their home turf 36-22. This Affies team has not reached the heights of their previous year’s teams, but come Interschools, they will again be a force to be reckoned with.
The 2014 Affies Squad
Key player to watch out for is mercurial fullback Eduan Keyter.
1 DP du Plessis
2 Ramon Viviers
3 Reinhardt Goosen
4 Ruben van Heerden
5 Juan Basson
6 Gavin Foster
7 Vic Meyer
8 Ruan Roelofse
9 Carlo de Nysschen
10 Dale Hendricks
11 Janco Booysen
12 Eddie Fouché
13 Tiaan Schmullian
14 Pieter Coetzer
15 Eduan Keyter
16 Jano Espag
17 Viaan Mong
18 Louis de Jongh
19 Human Bodenstein
20 Eduan Lubbe
21 Divan Henning
22 Ryno Lourens
23 Henco Jordaan
Three players represented the Blue Bulls during Craven Week in Eduan Keyter, Eduan Lubbe and Eddie Fouche, with Keyter also making the SA Schools squad.
Pretoria Boys High is not having one of their best seasons and just like rivals Affies they are performing below their usual high standards. They kicked off with a loss against KES and then bounced back with a win against DHS. Then followed a dismal streak of 8 losses in a row. They did face top opponents like, Kearsney, Maritzburg College, Paarl Boys, Westville and Jeppe to name a few, but they should have at least won one of these. They lost by one point to Jeppe and only by 4 to Kearsney. Luck did not seem to go their way in 2014. They then picked up wins against St Albans, Parktown and St Benedicts, but lost again against KES and St Johns. Their last two encounters they both lost against Menlopark and Maritzburg College, so with a not too perfect record, their season will be somewhat better if they can pull off an unlikely win against Affies.
The 2014 PBHS Squad
1 Jake Blew
2 Viaan Jv Rensberg
3 Mashoa Mukhari
4 Ryan Carlson
5 Dan Malengela
6 Mitchell Baumann
7 Reenen Buys-Du Plessis
8 Gideon vd Berg
9 Tristan Eve
10 Dean Waghorn
11 Wayne Parker
12 Rossouw Basson
13 Dillon Pirie
14 Armand Mare
15 Dylan Neser
16 Kevin vd Berg
17 Aiden Malan
19 Rupert Louw
20 Jan Volschenk
21 Jordan Williams
Affies Profile
The Afrikaanse Hoër Seunskool (Afrikaans Boys’ High School) also known as Affies, is a public high school for boys situated in the city of Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa, opposite Loftus Versfeld, the rugby stadium and home of the Bulls and Blue Bulls. The school is well known throughout South Africa for its high academic standards, sport achievements and production of leaders in a variety of fields and subjects, in South Africa and throughout the world.
The school’s founding on 28 January 1920 marked the establishment of the first purely Afrikaans-medium school in South Africa. This event predated the official recognition of the Afrikaans language by five years. With English as well as Dutch established as the official language in South Africa many of the Afrikaans population believed it should also enjoy recognition. Afrikaans as language grew so much that Cornelis Jacobus Langenhoven gave in a motion at the Cape Provincial Council to slowly replace Dutch with Afrikaans. This thought was strongly supported by MP Mr Jan Joubert and Pastor Chris Neetling. As leaders in the community they quickly organized a group to establish a purely Afrikaans school in Pretoria. Starting 28 January 1920, with 44 children and 3 teachers the school was founded.
The school was housed in the home of General Piet Joubert at 218 Visagie Street, Pretoria. By 1927, the school had grown and new premises were required. The school was therefore moved to the current premises of the Afrikaanse Hoër Meisieskool. At the end of 1927, the school took over the Hogere Oosteindschool, a Dutch-medium instruction school, suggestive of the demise of Dutch as a language in South Africa and the ensuing adoption of Afrikaans as the primary instruction medium.
By 1929 this building had also run out of space and the decision was made to split the boys and girls into separate schools, thus creating the first separate Afrikaans boys’ and girls’ schools in South Africa. These two schools are now situated across each other in Lynnwood Road.
The beautiful old buildings of the “Hogere Oosteindskool” that houses Affies since 1927
Rugby at Affies
Affies is famed and regarded as one of the best rugby schools in South Africa. It has delivered many Springbok players in the past and continues to supply loads of talent in the SA Schools and SA Academy sides. Affies also has many players’ at all provincial levels of rugby.
Affies have a huge talent pool in the school and one that is rich in depth. There are more than 10 senior teams each year, and teams as far as G-teams are filled at each age group.
Each year Affies challenge the country’s leading rugby schools such as Grey College (Bloem), Maritzburg College, Glenwood High School, KES and many more. At these derby matches each and every team gets a chance to take the field for the Rooi, Geel and Groen. In the last few decades Affies has produced top quality players such as Louis Schmidt, Wynand Olivier, Fourie du Preez and current Blue Bulls captain Pierre Spies (also an Affies choir boy) to name but a few. Perhaps Affies’ most unknown star was Francois Swart who played fly-half for Die Witbulle (the school’s first team) alongside scrum-half Fourie du Preez. The formidable duo played for the Blue Bulls and were fast becoming the next Springbok scrum-and fly-half pair. Tragically Francois Swart died in 2004 and since then Affies hosts an under-15 rugby tournament in the Easter Holidays bearing the name of Francois Swart. The long standing legacy of Affies rugby builds each year and upcoming stars are still being produced.
Rugby Alumni of Affies
| SA SCHOOLS
Bennie Botes |
1991 |
| SA ACADEMY
Christo Potgieter |
1990 |
SPRINGBOKS
|
Player |
DebutYear |
|---|---|
| Louis Schmidt |
1958 |
| Tonie Roux |
1969 |
| Pierre Edwards |
1980 |
| Grant Esterhuizen |
2000 |
| Fourie du Preez |
2004 |
| Wynand Olivier |
2006 |
| Pierre Spies |
2006 |
| Dean Greyling |
2011 |
Wynand Olivier, Fourie Du Preez and Pierre Spies. Three old Affies played together for the Boks against Australia on 15th July 2006.
Pretoria Boys High Profile
Pretoria Boys High School, also known as Boys High, is a public English medium boys high school located in Brooklyn, Pretoria, South Africa, founded in 1901 by The Rt Hon. Lord Milner. Its academic performance places it among the bestsecondary schools in rankings nationally, as well as in all of Africa. Notable alumni includes two Nobel Prize laureates, 18Rhodes scholars, eight Supreme Court judges, intellectuals and sportsmen.
The school enrolls around 1500 pupils, including 300 boarders. Its neoclassical red-brick style main school buildings date from 1909, maintaining provincial heritage site status. The school grounds also include a second campus, Pollock Campus, as well as sporting and recreational facilities. Three boarding houses are located on the school grounds: Rissik House and Solomon House are part of the original school complex completed in 1909, while School House was built later.
Pretoria Boys High School can trace its origins back over more than 110 years. During the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902), the city of Pretoria was captured in 1900 by British forces under Lord Roberts and the Transvaal became a British colony. One of the responsibilities of the colonial administration was to re-establish schools as these had all been closed during the hostilities. Although the war continued to be fought by the Boers as a guerilla conflict, moves were made to start a school in central Pretoria and Charles Hope was brought up from the Eastern Cape to undertake the task. Hope had to establish a school virtually from scratch as he tried to source everything from desks to teachers. He did at least have a building in the form of the Staats Model School, built in the 1890s in President Paul Kruger’s erstwhile ZAR (Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek), as a combined school for boys and a teachers’ training college. Closed at the onset of hostilities in 1899, it served for a while as a prisoner of war camp for captured British officers (mainly from the campaign in Natal) and included among its internees none other than Winston Churchill who was captured as a war correspondent. His successful escape from the building added a colourful chapter to the history of the building. The Staats Model School is preserved as a national monument today and still has relics of its former inmates in the form of murals and an incomplete escape tunnel.
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Charles Hope set up a small school that started classes in mid 1901. PBHS regards him as its founding headmaster and bases its annual “Founders Day” on the date he taught his first lesson. For a year, the school existed as school for both boys and girls. In 1902 the girls were provided with their own building and this is how the sister school of PBHS came into being, namely Pretoria High School for Girls. Charles Hope left for Johannesburg (where he established a further school) and the first of two headmasters brought from England, replaced him. Harold Atkinson had studied at Cambridge and taught at Rossall School in Lancashire. The school he inherited in central Pretoria had 84 pupils. The original colours of the school (blue, brown and red) were adopted for hat bands although there was not yet a uniform.
Atkinson’s successor was John Acheson who played an important part in pressing for new grounds and buildings for the school that had by this stage, become known as the Pretoria College. The head of education in the Transvaal Colony, Sir John Adamson, motivated for the granting of money to build a new boys’ school and in 1908 a sum of £36 000 was approved by the colonial secretary, Jan Smuts. Land was set aside on the town lands to the east of Pretoria, then very much on the outskirts of the town, for three educational institutions, these being a boys high school, a new site for Pretoria High School for Girls and the newly-established Transvaal University College today the University of Pretoria.
The land allocated to the then Pretoria College comprised about one hundred acres running partly up the side of a ridge. It had previously been used for a British army hospital camp. Plans for the new school buildings were drawn up by the chief architect of the Public Works Department, Piercey Eagle. The original buildings comprised a main central building (with classrooms, offices, a library and a school hall) and the two boarding houses, one to the west and the other to the east of the main building. Construction of the buildings began in 1908 with locally quarried mud-stone and locally made bricks (from Kirkness brickworks) combined with Free State sandstone to create the pleasing buildings that are still the attractive centrepiece of the school today.
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The foundation stone was laid by the Governor General, the Earl of Selbourne, in July 1908 and construction of the buildings was completed early in 1909. The new school buildings were opened in April 1909 by Jan Smuts with Mr GL Thomas as the acting headmaster. The school badge and the school magazine (The Pretorian), both date from 1909. The boarding houses were named after ministers in the Transvaal government: Rissik House after Johan Rissik (Minister of Lands) and Solomon House after Sir Edward Solomon (Minister of Public Works). All boarders were housed in Rissik House for the first months before the “Solomonites” moved to their own house.
In 1910 the school changed its name to Pretoria Boys High School when the Pretoria College amalgamated with the Eendracht School. This move parallelled the establishment of the Union of South Africa in the same year and was motivated in part by a political imperative: to promote the reconciliation of English and Dutch-speaking South Africans in the aftermath of the bitter war recently fought in the region. The first headmaster of the school (under its new name) was William Hofmeyr who would serve from 1910 until 1934, the longest term yet of a PBHS headmaster. He instilled much of the discipline for which the school would become famous. The dual-medium institution would last ten years. By 1920, the divide between English and Afrikaans speakers had become apparent nationwide; this was reflected in the need for a separate Afrikaans high school in Pretoria. Consequently, the Afrikaanse Hoër Seunskool was formed immediately south of its parent, becoming the first Afrikaans-medium high school in the country, several years before Afrikaans attained official recognition as a language (and not a semi-Creole of Dutch). The two schools enjoy close ties to this day, especially in an enthusiastic but friendly rivalry in sporting events. PBHS would now be left in its present form, known as Pretoria Boys High School, an English-medium public school.
Rugby at Pretoria Boys High
PBHS has a rich tradition in rugby and produced South Africa’s most successful and longest serving Springbok captain in John Smit.
Affectionately known as “The Candies’ because of their green and red striped first team jersey, the Pretoria Boys High rugby teams are known for their absolute gentlemenship on and off the rugby fields.
To date they have produced three Springbok rugby players in Robbie Brink, John Smit and Chilliboy Ralapele. Smit was also the Springbok captain during the 2007 Rugby World Cup campaign which South Africa won.
John Smit with the World Cup 2007.
Boys High usually field 28 rugby teams, but when they are playing Affies can field up to 30 teams for the day. They recently appointed a new Director of Rugby in Ryno van der Merwe and are looking to up the ante in the future. Pretoria Boys were up until now, the only well-known school team without a team sponsor, clinging to the true amateur spirit of the schoolboy game. May it continue to be so and hopefully they can find alternative methods to stay competitive in this ever changing world of Schoolboy rugby.
Historic Information courtesy of Pretoria Boys High website and Affies Website.
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