St Johns Easter Rugby Festival

The St John's College Easter Rugby Festival has been a cornerstone of the Johannesburg schools calendar since 1996, staged over the Easter weekend on the famous Burger Field and celebrated for a philosophy it wears proudly: no league tables, no trophies, no medals. It is rugby at its purest, played for the love of the game, school spirit and community, and it carries a piece of history few sporting events anywhere can match, with Nelson Mandela officially opening the third edition during the College's centenary year of 1998.

The festival brings together leading College and Prep school sides from across South Africa alongside touring teams from neighbouring countries and far beyond, with recent editions welcoming St Joseph's Nudgee College from Brisbane and Westlake Boys' High from Auckland. The traditional format pairs U19 and U13 fixtures across the festival days, with rising U16 sides added to the Monday programme in recent years, so that the whole pathway of schoolboy rugby shares the same stage.

Under the Standard Bank banner the festival has grown into a full occasion for the rugby public: packed embankments around Burger Field, heavyweight visitors from Grey College to Bishops, and three decades of Easter mornings where the game's future has been on show in the heart of Johannesburg.