Ulster School's Cup Final 2018

MEMORIES ARE MADE OF THIS! “Meet you under the Memorial Clock? In about an hour? They’ll all be there waiting, OK?”

It’s a familiar arrangement, made annually, by team-mates of many generations, a sporting rite of early Spring, which makes the Danske Bank Ulster Schools’ Cup Final a very special day in the calendar. Of course, normally the decider for rugby’s second oldest trophy takes place on St. Patrick’s Day, and the ‘drowning of the shamrock’ offered a happy confluence for comradely reunions and a unique rugby occasion. Since 1876, when one of today’s combatants, Royal School, Armagh, carved its name in the Cup as the inaugural winners, the Final has been the ultimate aspiration for players, parents and extended families across the Province. As the competition gathered its rich history and accumulated a well-deserved prestige the target of appearing in, or watching in well-controlled displays of partisanship, the Schools’ Cup Final has retained and embellished its allure. Not even the rather itinerant 40 years until a permanent venue was found and secured at Ravenhill Park denied the growing lustre associated with the best teams from around the Province – and on one celebrated occasion Galway! – contesting the unusual trophy, a Cup mounted on a wooden shield. From the crisp Saturday mornings of early January, at first, the expectations of the lofty and the humble rose as the chunky sweaters, waterproof layers and vivid scarves were wrapped around bodies which would line the touchlines, noisy and unrelentingly biased! The tournament format has changed in more recent years to reflect the disparity in resources and physical terms, but for a century and more the David and Goliath tussles of the early rounds inspired the most unlikely dreams. Could the players of Antrim Grammar lower the colours of the regal Methody, could Belfast ‘Inst’ be despatched home, downcast, after a visit to Cambridge House?

Usually the ‘natural order’ prevailed, but not so inevitably that twelve months later the very same earnest hopes to achieve the unlikely did not emerge just as enthusiastically as every year the Schools’ Cup hove into view. It would be naïve to think or believe that the pure innocence of those days live on, but the instincts survive and very healthily. Optimism marks the start of every edition of this most respected of rugby competitions. It maintains its primary, historic purpose of offering the opportunity to experience the wonder that is schools sport, where character is shaped and built, where team spirit is generated, and where academe and sport cannot just co-exist but incentivise each other. The Schools’ Cup, of course, has spread its wings, to the immense credit of volunteer administrators of imagination and commitment to the game and to the boys, and girls, who enjoy the thrill of competition. There are subsidiary tournaments so that dreams are not shattered, seasons not ended, in a frosty 70 minutes in January. One of the most acknowledged is the Medallion Shield - which Campbell College had hoped would have already been in the 2018 trophy cabinet at Belmont – is as fiercely contested and hugely respected, its reputation for affording a stage for those players who have, perhaps, an eye on a St. Patrick’s Day senior Final at Kingspan Stadium a few years on. As the professional game flourished and the rugby gospel was spreading it remained a constant that it was in our schools that rugby was cherished still, where mainly amateur coaches give so generously of their time and experience to allow their young charges a glimpse of just what a rewarding sport they can enjoy: and where some values which will serve all well in life and work are core and sacred. Today the teams which have earned the right to play in front of a huge crowd - and a big ‘live’

GUEST ARTICLE: ROD NAWN

www.danskebankschoolscup.com

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