The intrigue of a Derby

This Saturday sees one of the most famed schoolboy derbies in the country take place in the country town of Paarl. Last year I made my first trip to the Faure Street stadium to take it all in and was absolutely blown away by the occasion. The match itself being the climax of an entire week’s worth of celebrations. Special assemblies, old boys’ gatherings and numerous other rituals add to a week of camaraderie, emotion and much more. For 30 boys however, there is a job to be done, and that is to take home the most prized spoils (for their school) of an Interschools win. Where the intrigue comes I believe, is in what does it really take to win these big games?

In a conversation with a respected rugby coach on Saturday, he claimed that the form side always wins these games, and perhaps statistically this is the case, but I’m not 100% convinced. The nature of the game is that it creates a lot of talk and hype, which in turn puts extra pressure on the players and coaches. One of the best ways to offset pressure is belief in your ability as a team, and therefore when a team is doing well, it is likely that their self-belief is high and thus best set to cope with the pressure of the big game, enabling more wins. What I’m saying then is that belief is perhaps more important than form. It really all depends which way you look at it. A team who may not be in top form, may still find ways still to have a high level of self belief and thus the form issue becomes less important.
Another generally accepted theory is that the team who wants it more will win. Now this may be the case in some ways, but I have yet to find many teams who cannot motivate themselves for the big game. I believe however, the team who has attached more meaning to the win, or to their season as a whole will be the team who may show the better mindset for the game. They will have discussed the importance of the game, what it means to them personally to win, and all members will have a similar idea of why they want to win and how they will do so. A purpose for a sports team, and attaching meaning to that purpose is one of the first things I would do with any team, as if this base is set clearly, motivation problems rarely exist.
So it will be interesting to see which team shows the greater belief and desire but also which team is able to play for the full game at their optimal levels. Will one of the team’s have tired themselves out in all the build-up, will they find the pressure a little too great to handle or will they put more focus onto the opponents and forget about their own game? We as spectators are just not sure in a big derby which team will be able to hit their straps the best, as the variables are always greater, as mentioned above, but that’s what makes these fixtures so intriguing.
Good luck to both sides, but I’ll be in Blue on Saturday.