Will you permit me to channel my former English teacher for a minute and quote a few lines from a poem?
It’s from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ozymandias, and it goes:
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Those are the words inscribed on the base of a massive, fallen and ruined statue, half buried in the desert and it refers to a long-forgotten emperor who once ruled the known world, and arrogantly thought it would last forever.
We all know of a few politicians that the idea could be applied to , but it occurred to me this is also one of those points where art and sport intersect and where what happens in the classroom can be used to reinforce what we are supposed to be teaching out on the sports fields.
And, yes, I’m going to go on again about my view that the main and only reason why sport is part of what happens in schools is to help children to be better human beings by the time they go out into the wide world out there.
And the lesson here, as Ozymandias never found out, is that nothing lasts forever. The wheel turns, and those who were on top once are going to find themselves at the bottom one day, that much is certain.
There are some examples, in school sport, where it’s clearly going to take a while - St Benedict’s dominance of SA Schools rowing, and Northcliff High School’s winning streak in Joburg co-ed schools athletics - come to mind, but it’s going to happen one day, for sure.
I got to thinking about these things while listening in on a circle of wise grey heads after the King Edward v Pretoria Boys’ High School game two weeks ago. Men approaching retirement, who had seen it all and, in their ways, achieved most of what there was to be achieved in their day.
The topic was the way in which KES had dominated the rugby fixture that morning - they won 20 of the 24 games played and their memories were of a time, not so long ago, when the situation was reversed. And the consensus was that it mattered not a jot. There were no statues built then (or there should not have been, anyway), and there is no call for building statues now.
Examples abound. There was another one that very afternoon. I’ve never denied that I am Lions fan, but anyone would have to agree the turnaround in the fortunes and performance of the province has been remarkable.
They rolled the Kings over with ease, and now lie fourth on the overall Super Rugby league table, which didn’t seem possible four years ago when they were dumped from the competition to be replaced by those very Kings, and no-one stood up for them, mainly because they performed so poorly the season before that they didn’t deserve to play at that level. How that has changed - and there are lessons to be learned.
School rugby teams are not professional outfits like the Lions who could spend money and set up structures to make it happen, but if those who run school teams don’t have those lessons in mind, they aren’t doing their job.
The lessons are about not despairing, about the virtues and eventual rewards of hard work, about building achievement, one small step at a time, and about not allowing yourself to be written off.
And, above all, it’s about not being arrogant while you are on the top of the pile, because you are definitely not going to be there forever.
Ask Ozymandias. - Independent Media