Grant Khomo Week

The Grant Khomo Week is South Africa's premier under-16 tournament, the U16 leg of SA Rugby's national Youth Weeks, contested in the same provincial format as the famous Craven Week two age groups above it. Every provincial union sends its best under-16 side, joined regularly by Namibia and Zimbabwe, and for most of the country's future professionals it is the first time they pull on a provincial jersey on a national stage.

The week carries a name that matters. Grant Khomo was one of the great figures of Black South African rugby: a brilliant all-round sportsman who captained national sides in the era of segregation, an educator, and later president of the South African African Rugby Board, where he fought for a non-racial game decades before it arrived. Honoured posthumously with the Order of Ikhamanga, his name on the national under-16 week stands as the game's tribute to a man it once shut out.

Like the other Youth Weeks the tournament keeps no points log and crowns no official champion; fixtures are seeded as the week unfolds, with the strongest provinces meeting on the final day. For scouts it is the first proper look at a generation: the boys who stand out at Grant Khomo Week form the spine of the Craven Week squads two seasons later, and the pathway from here runs all the way to the Springboks.