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If you didn’t spend last Saturday stark naked and ripped to the tits while dancing around a fire in the Tankwa Karoo with half of middle-aged bourgeoise South Africa, it is likely you spent a good portion of the day watching schoolboys play rugby in the rain.

And if you were at The Burn, you are probably in bed and on the verge of suicide while you deal with the terrifying prospect of another year of normality.

I watched my eight-year-old play rugby on Saturday morning. I hedged against the Autumn weather with some utilitarian gumboots, a working raincoat, and a Consequence Wealth umbrella that I had received gratis with my life insurance policy. When I arrived at the designated Southern Suburbs field, I felt as underdressed as a South African in a lounge suit at a smart English wedding where everyone else understood that you should be wearing tails. I surmised for a moment that some cad had either spiked my flask of tea with a powerful dose of psilocybin, or I had been teleported into the Cheltenham Races.

Cougars stalked the touchlines in head-to-toe Barbour healed in virgin Hunter boots which had never encountered mud. A few unfortunates of the arriviste were wrapped in Burberry scarves without realising their expensive accessories were being sneered at from across the field by chortling snobs. Surely everyone knows that Burberry is known as Essex tartan. I saw one gentleman decked out entirely in tweed, including plus fours and a flat cap. I hoped, for the sake of the referees and the coaches that he had left his shotgun at home.

Peripherals favoured Scandinavian wet weather wear. A row of chaps in flat caps sat on shooting sticks along the touchline like sparrows on a telephone line. It appeared as if the entire crowd were dressed from a catalogue at the back end of Horse and Hound.

A couple of ladies in jodhpurs looked as if they may have jumped a few fences that morning. A few others resembling Stormy Daniels (also wearing jodhpurs) appeared as if that expression meant something altogether different for them. I wonder if these outfits are worn to match north of the Boerewors curtain. Surely there would be little patience among our Afrikaner brethren for this level of Anglophilia – particularly after a few brandies.

I like watching my boy play rugby. He is showing signs of bravery, which is fortunate, since I spent most of my rugby career terrified and mostly in the position of ‘ruck inspector,’ slightly behind the melee and out of range of the flying fists. I tried to offer polite encouragement from the sidelines without putting too much pressure on him. I didn’t go as far as “More pressure from the rear” although this was a popular chant from Michaelhouse’s parents in the ’80s.

The parents on the sidelines beside me adopted an alternative approach. Boys who made errors were shrieked at by mothers on the verge of hysteria. I was surprised Falkenberg hadn’t set up a stall beside the medic’s tent, with several strait jackets waiting to be deployed on a row of dumb valets behind them. Aggressive fathers paced the touchline vicariously like leopards spreading their scent on the wrong side of the ropes, occasionally breaking into a sprint to keep up with play. The referee was openly abused.

I observed parents arguing about referee decisions and castigating coaches. Fortunately, these didn’t escalate into a fistfight. This has happened before, albeit in the Natal Midlands, which is, of course, on another level altogether, when violence is concerned. I thought we may have evolved since my last experience of schoolboy rugby in the 90’s. Unfortunately, it appears that Darwin’s theory takes a lot longer to play out in the colonies.

I left after watching the first half of the under-10 A match.  It was pouring with rain and my shivering children were already dangerously full of junk food. No one else was going anywhere. Most were staying for the first team game and wondered, incredulously, why anyone would want to be anywhere else. I explained that I had other plans – who knew that schoolboy rugby has become the social highlight of the weekend?

I wondered simultaneously whether there weren’t better things to do on Cape Town’s beaches and mountains on a Saturday morning. Perhaps playing your own sport or even watching a professional play?

Although I totally understand why people enjoy watching their own children playing sports. It is fun to observe them dealing with the challenges of the game and learning to work with their teammates towards a common objective. But there was an intensity about the watching that I found unsettling – it was like Oppenheimer watching the first test detonation of the atomic bomb. As if, somehow, what was happening in an Under 10 C match was vitally important.  While learning to deal with high pressure at the prep school level could potentially prepare a future Springbok for the intensity of a World Cup Final, I am not sure it is good for the psychology of your run-of-the-mill scholar.

Unfortunately, this obsession isn’t restricted to the sidelines on Saturday mornings. It has infected society as a whole. Dinner parties and golf games are habitually ruined by parents debating the demise of the Bishops rugby programme after humiliating losses to Milnerton, Wynberg and, God forbid, Michaelhouse. Why is there more conversation about schoolboy rugby than Trump’s foray into Stormy Daniels? How on earth can the Bishops under 14 A be more interesting than a trial about a US President shagging a pornstar and then paying her off. Particularly a President who presents an existential threat to this planet and has a puncher’s chance of a second term. And what about Zuma?

The last time I checked Bishops was a school, designed to educate young gentlemen (and provide them with excess self-confidence) rather than a rugby academy. As incredulous as this may seem, a good education is more important than rugby. You only need to be in the top 10 per cent in Maths to increase your statistical chances of financial success whereas the equivalent number in sport is a small decimal.

Perhaps it is because we are so terrified of the current geopolitical and environmental climates we find ourselves in that our society has subconsciously stuck our heads in the sand and are only interested in what is happening at the end of our noses? God knows, anyone still living in South Africa must have a natural talent for ignoring red flags.

Surely, we should also be concerned by the examples we are setting for our children. You can’t tell them sport is only a game and we all need to learn how to lose and then behave as if their messing up on the field is a disaster while treating the coaches and referees like underlings. Monkey see, monkey do.

I was discussing all of this after tennis this morning with a well-balanced serial Africa burner named Cool Hand Luke. He thought about it a little and said:

“I think these dudes need to zoom out a little, man. Like, see the bigger picture.”

I am not suggesting a forced inoculation of Constantia with LSD in the same way as Timothy Leary and Alan Ginsberg were plotting to pour acid into the San Francisco water system in the ’60s. But perhaps Cool Hand Luke has a point.