While the schoolboy and schoolgirl athletes were busy presenting their months and even years of athletic preparation to the public at the National Stadium last week, the negative spillover from the intense rivalry 'Champs' generates was playing out in the press.

Up to the last minute whether or not a pair of after-Champs parties would be held was yet to be decided, as there were concerns from the security forces about a continuation and escalation of the traditional inter-school rivalry off the track.

How that violence will be contained is one issue. Why there is that violence is a much deeper issue, but there is also the matter of just what boys do to consider themselves men.

In the absence of a formal system by which boys are presented challenges which, if they are passed, mark them as having crossed over into manhood, they turn to contests among themselves.

And those contests are, unfortunately, almost always negative outside the structure of organised sports, what with young men having road racing contests, sexual prowess battles (or, at least, tales thereof) and physical fights, such as those which have occurred over Champs loyalties and which the police were afraid would recur at the post-athletic meet championships.

So, in the long run, banning the events and sending more police on the streets to stand between feuding gangs is no solution. Once a method of marking manhood is determined and implemented, then the negative manifestations should at least decline sharply.