More media foment over school rugby.

[jgriffin]

http://tinyurl.com/hrf2rh2

I won't even start on how misleading this 'report' is.

[ourla]

Chip paper is too good for it. Best just stick it straight on the fire.

[Snorbins]

Got more injuries from British Bulldog.

[Ads677]

So, let's also ban the following (there are probably more):

Soccer - heading, tackling;
Cricket - fielding close-in;
Hockey - the sticks themselves (terrible weapons);
Squash - the racquets (ditto);
Horse riding - falling off:
Motorsport - everything;
Gymnastics - too many to mention;
Cycling - falling off (and especially when strapped or clipped in);
Boxing - hmmm
Winter sports - too many to mention again.

And so on!

Yes, I agree that it would always be better for anyone involved in school coaching of any sport to have specialist qualifications, but realistically this cannot happen.

And of course, sport can provide benefits other than fitness and skill such as happiness, sociableness, worth, tolerance, team work (especially for boys), and so on.

[johnthegriff]

Played rugby from the age of eleven. It was maths and log books that made my head ache!

[LE18]

Something seems very wrong here to me, if schools play rugby, surely as part of their staffing requirement, they recruit a PE Master/Mistress who has rugby coaching qualification/experience, if not it seems to me that they are in breach of some regulations, after all you would not work or play in a club that does not have the relavent teaching facility?

When I attended a rugby playing school, Dixie, we had a PE master who had played at a very good level, please don't say yes but that was a Grammar school, we played against schools such as South Wigston who had excellent rugby masters.

Perhaps those were the good old days, now we have so many students at Uni, perhaps they are only doing Media Studies, in the hope of getting a PE teaching job!

[murphy15]

What we should be doing, as they do in NZ, is separating kids in to weight categories, rather than age groups. This takes away the possibility of tiny kids getting battered by that one freak of nature who weighs 14 stone and has a moustache at the age of 12. It encourages focus on balls skills and footwork in all weight categories.

[LE18]

Murphy, that would not work in schools in their PE period, how would you get all the 8 stone kids to be taking PE at the same time, some would be on Maths, English periods etc etc, then you move on to 9 stone, 10 stone etc.

OK would work on Saturdays if the school played matches, but not much time together as a unit during the week.

[jgriffin]

What we should be doing, as they do in NZ, is separating kids in to weight categories, rather than age groups. This takes away the possibility of tiny kids getting battered by that one freak of nature who weighs 14 stone and has a moustache at the age of 12. It encourages focus on balls skills and footwork in all weight categories.

This, for me, is the missing piece in the equation for this country. I work in a rugby school, and they despair sometimes at the size of some of the opposition (we do have a 6ft 17 stone Year 9). Having said that, there are relatively few schools play rugby, and in the soccer school I used to teach in, rugby was a half-term basic skills and half-pitch 7s with no outside matches. This was the norm - most schools now do not have a rugby specialist and soccer is the winter sport. Any rugby players belong to local sides and if a school wants to field a team for some bizarre reason, given the right area, they cobble one from local rugby. This happened in my school some years ago in North Notts.
Therefore, almost all schools rugby is either independent/grammar with specialists teachers OR club age-group (which admittedly needs some reform).

[murphy15]

Murphy, that would not work in schools in their PE period, how would you get all the 8 stone kids to be taking PE at the same time, some would be on Maths, English periods etc etc, then you move on to 9 stone, 10 stone etc.

OK would work on Saturdays if the school played matches, but not much time together as a unit during the week.

Most rugby-playing schools I am aware of operate Sports afternoons, where no years have lessons. They could implement this easily, as could local clubs with age-group levels.

[ads]

I'm not sure if this is only talking about Rugby Union or including League as well.

My son, who was 7 at the time, played his first rugby tournament last June. We live in Leeds and his school plays rugby league. Teams were made up of year 3 and 4, so most kids were 7-9 and it was full on tackling. I was surprised at first as I thought it'd be tag rugby or something like that. The kids seemed to be enjoying it but there were a couple of minor injuries.
Training for this is all done after school or out of lesson time. PE is totally separate.

[jgriffin]

I'm not sure if this is only talking about Rugby Union or including League as well.

My son, who was 7 at the time, played his first rugby tournament last June. We live in Leeds and his school plays rugby league. Teams were made up of year 3 and 4, so most kids were 7-9 and it was full on tackling. I was surprised at first as I thought it'd be tag rugby or something like that. The kids seemed to be enjoying it but there were a couple of minor injuries.
Training for this is all done after school or out of lesson time. PE is totally separate.

Very popular in the Catholic schools - must be all that mortification of the flesh.....

[ellis9]

It's all nonsense really. Sport hurts!

The right aspects of the game are brought in at different ages and that works fine as it is.

To suggest we should do it in weight ranges is stupid. All the big fat people go together, you can all play as forwards and all the skinny people can be backs. That won't work.

When I played as a child, I started at 8 years old and was a similar size to everyone. As the years went on, I started becoming the smallest on the pitch. From age 14-17, I was probably about 8-9 stones playing against some people that were 14-15 stones. The worst injury I ever got in 10 years was a badly twisted ankle. In the 4-5 years I played cricket, I had a cricket ball smacked in to my face which knocked me out, cut my lip and loosened a tooth.

[northerntiger]

A lot of the people posting here, and the writers of the article, don't really understand how school sport works. Most comps do PE, where a different sport is taught, at a pretty low level, each half term, in a one hour lesson. Competitive teams are after school clubs, and very few do rugby. It is not full contact in PE, more a coaching session, and generally poorly done.
The private sector, and grammar school have a games afternoon, and that is where most school rugby is played. They do full contact, 15 a side, on a full pitch from year 7 (first year). In my sons school it is compulsory until 3rd year.
Most rugby is played through clubs, where they start with tag, and gradually introduce contact, scrums and numbers, eventually getting to full contact, 15 a sided at u13 ( one year after schools).
I notice the article doesn't produce any stats about injuries, or really any facts.

[teds]

I notice the article doesn't produce any stats about injuries, or really any facts.

I think that's the key point.

The dept of education has a duty to properly study how and where children get injured or made ill through sport and what if anything thing can be done about it. Their utter failure to do or at least to make the media aware of it, leaves the field open for quacks like this to publish whatever they feel.

My suspicion is horse riding, trampolining, gymnastics etc are at least as bad if not worse as rugby but let's see what the data show.

That said, contact rugby should be optional and playing by weight category, should at least be investigated.