I AM a proud ambassador of New Orleans Secondary and am currently in matric. It saddens me that our opponents simply cannot accept defeat and have resorted to alleging that our players were over age.
I have shed many tears over the last four years and had to witness first-hand how cruel, yet humbling, the reality of losing can be and most of all, I had to learn to give credit where credit is due.
Not once (in our four years of losing) have I heard any of my peers say something degrading or negative regarding our rival school’s winning (which we all knew was well deserved and hard earned), yet in our heartache we kept on saying “next year it will be our year” and this year our words became our reality.
If the debate is about buying players and recruiting players who played previously (but are still of the approved age), I would consider both schools to be guilty. I thus struggle to fathom the necessity of this debate and the reason for turning this into something ugly.
Since 1984 derby has the kind of tradition that made our compassion greater than our anger and the friendships and the bonds between us more intense than our battle.
It was once about uniting and having fun, raising a glass to sportsmanship, enjoying the game, sharing in the anxiety of the unknown result and putting Paarl in a position where it takes a moment to stand in awe of the colourful turquoise, black and white against the navy, yellow and white.
Twenty-seven years later we fight about honesty, saying the ref was unfair (forgetting that New Orleans was not the host this year) and making hurtful comments that hold no ground (we are transparent - all our players are official learners of the school and registered on CEMIS).
If the tradition is about winning and losing, claiming dominance, proving superiority and setting us apart, I ask, what are we busy with and why are we still doing it? If this is what it is about then the Derby has lost its meaning and is thus pointless.
We then have to go back to the drawing board and ask ourselves where it all went wrong, how do we rectify it and restore the Derby to its glory. If we don’t, we are simply depriving ourselves of the opportunity to add value and continue building on something beautiful.
Arrogance can make us blind, jealousy can make us nasty, but not knowing how to share in each other’s joy makes us unworthy opponents.
I consider the Derbyof 2011 to be a huge success. I wish all the learners of the respective schools well and I hope that this would be the start of taking our tradition to greater heights.
Amy Adams
headgirl
New Orleans High
