Opposition teams be warned. Any schools playing rugby against the top two years at Sir Thomas Rich’s next term will need to be at their very best if they are to get anything out of the games.

That’s because the current years 11 and 12 are embarking on a three-week tour to South Africa in the summer and history shows that the school’s teams always hit the ground running at the start of a new season after they’ve been on tour.

So, says deputy headmaster Chris Carter, who will be one of six staff responsible for the 49 boys who will be heading to the land of the Springboks on July 18th.

“This is the sixth time that we’ve organised a rugby tour to the southern hemisphere,” said Carter, himself a former pupil at the school back in the 1970s. “We usually have very good seasons after we’ve been on a summer tour.

“Our first trip was in 2007 and we’ve been to Australia three times and New Zealand once. This will be our second time to South Africa.”

Rugby has always been a massive part of life at the Gloucester school but Carter, a keen rugby fan, reckons it has come on even further in the last decade.

“Rhys Williams, who is in charge of rugby and is our director of sport, has done an amazing job since he joined the school about 10 years ago,” said Carter.

“We’re playing all the top schools in the country – Millfield, Llandovery, Warwick, RGS High Wycombe, Solihull and Bristol Grammar School to name just a few. We’re playing these schools across the board so we’re competing against them from year 7 right through to year 13.”

And they’re more than holding their own against these heavyweight schools. “Our 1sts have beaten Millfield away for the last two seasons,” said Carter proudly. “The 1sts have improved no end over the past 10 years or so. Rhys, who played rugby for Wales at all age groups including senior level, has taken us on to another level and created one of the best fixture lists in the country.”

This season has been another successful one for the school with the 1st XV reaching the quarter-finals of the NatWest Cup, the under-15s winning the Vase Cup at Sixways and the under-14s winning the County Cup at Kingsholm.

School matches are played mainly on Saturdays and require plenty of sacrifices on the part of the pupils – and the staff and parents!

“The commitment of the students is paramount,” said Carter. “We’re playing schools all over the country and quite often we have to leave at 8am on Saturdays. Our pupils come from all over the county so for a lot of them it means a very early start.”

The positives far outweigh the negatives, of course, and as far the tours to the southern hemisphere are concerned, there are no negatives.

“It’s a huge experience for them,” said Carter. “They get to go to a wonderful country and experience a different culture. It’s something they might not ever do again.

“We’ll be going on a number of excursions including the Pilanesberg Game Reserve, Table Mountain and Robben Island. It’s not just about the rugby, this sort of tour broadens their horizons.”

It may not be all about the rugby, but the rugby is very important, of course. They will be playing five of the top schools in the land – including Paarl HS, near Stellenbosch, Monument HS in Johannesburg, and a Langa Township XV based in Capetown – before they return to England on August 7th.

“Our boys will be presenting the Township boys with a large bag of kit after the game and will be involved in other charity work during the tour,” said Carter.

The boys’ families pay for the trip but the boys and families have been fundraising to pay for kit and extra excursions which has brought in £14,500 of their £20,000 target – and every pupil who wants to go on the tour is given a place.

“There was no selection,” said Carter. “We’ve got enough players to field three teams so everyone will get plenty of rugby.

“The tours have become so popular that even the current years 9 and 10 are talking about their tour in 2019.”

Closer to home the school regularly runs three teams and sometimes four for the year 7s on Saturday mornings and they can also run four teams for the years 8s. They run two teams in years 9 and 10 and also run an under-16s team for the year 11s – the last level before they reach the sixth form.

“We can have 70 youngsters playing on a Saturday morning,” said Carter, “and then more in the afternoons. We’re lucky that rugby is huge in Gloucester.”

Carter, a centre who was in the school’s first team for four years – two as captain – coaches the under-13s and helps out with the 1st XV when needed.

He was good enough to play for Old Richians 1st XV while he was still a pupil but it’s fair to say in those days the chances of a going on a tour to the southern hemisphere were even less likely than England beating Wales in Cardiff.

How times have changed!