school rugby

[Proud_Dad]

It is not, in my opinion and the opinion of many others, a thuggish game akin to mugging pedestrians in the street and it certainly IS a team game. You cannot win the game on one player alone, it requires speed, skill, passing and a certain amount of luck and, certainly, at professional level, you see a whole lot more sportsmanship than you do in say professional football.

Professional footballers aren't perfect sportsmen by any means, but I don't recall of any deliberately trying to blind an opponent...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye-gouging_(rugby_union" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;)

[southbucks3]

Eeewwww..."la forchette"

Truly horrible, I can say with certainty this would not be tolerated and hopefully not ever considered as a tactic by school rugby teams.

We did visit Belgium to play this year though, they allow and encourage handing off, which is not very nice at all, glad it is not on our fields.
The boys had a few extra sessions to get them used to the idea before we left, one of them....being impressionable and ten...immediately transferred his new skill to a local footy match and had a free kick awarded against him.

Let's not get into the old argument about which sport is more gentlemanly or sporting though, both are just ball games, both have good and bad points. I was more interested in the safety issues really and how we as parents can and should ask for better.

[Proud_Dad]

What I find strange is that these days schools can go too far over the top with some PC initiatives and petty health and safety rules - no snowball fights, no conkers, no leather footballs in the playground, no competitive races in sports days etc - and yet a truly dangerous game like rugby is still encouraged.

[kenyancowgirl]

Yes, that is a horrid incident, but one incident does not an argument make, Proud_Dad - come on, you're better than that!

Also rugby is a potentially dangerous game. Not truly dangerous game. The statistics of injury are still low. Hockey is also a potentially dangerous game. As is football - a number of serious fractured kneecaps and leg injuries occur in tackles there. Most schools quote health and safety legislation to stop children doing things they would rather them not do - most are not actually covered by H&S legislation, which is why some schools still run competitive sports days and allow conker fights and indeed have snow play days. Unfortunately an every growing proportion of parents in this country seem to favour the line taken by those across the pond. We are truly becoming a ridiculously litigious society when it comes to schools, amongst other things.

Anyway, as southbucks3 says, there is no merit in darting backwards and forwards trying to say one sport is better than another - my ds2 plays both and I will support him equally in both - (incidentally, he is a goalkeeper and has had far more injuries there, with no real protective gear than he has as a hooker - I think his head is quite often mistaken for the ball by over excited strikers!). The main point to make is that although lots of sports are potentially dangerous, good quality training and the right protective gear can go a long way to making them as safe as they can possibly be.

As a parent, we may wish to wrap our children in cotton wool - indeed, we may believe we are doing it for their own good - but we can't do it forever and giving them the tools to tackle difficult situations in their own way works on the rugby pitch and in real life.

[magwich2]

Slightly by the by but I do dispute the hackneyed sacred cow that people should be "team players". Didn't see any other members of the "team" when DD was in the exam hall struggling with the last question in Further Pure 1.
It is a truism that people should be good mannered and get on with others but that is NOT the same as being a "team player".
It would be much better if, for example, KES sold off two thirds of its playing fields and built a state of the art gym and pool.
Also, I was always taught that if you write something which is clearly open to argument then you do not need to qualify it by stating it as an opinion because it is OBVIOUSLY your opinion or you would not have written it.

[kenyancowgirl]

Eh? You were expecting other kids to help your son in an exam? Why? That's a daft example of team playing!

And why would it be better for KES to sell off their fields for a state of the art gym and pool? Again that is your opinion but it isn't one shared by me - there are far more things that could be built by KES than these but not at the expense of sports fields. They had a pool - it wasn't used enough - it became a car park - which is used a lot - pools are notoriously exceptionally expensive to run - the downfall of many state schools - they have a perfectly functional gym for the numbers in the school, which was recently refurbished. The school is still a predominantly male establishment and most evidence shows that boys do better if they have open space to run around in - hence the fields are essential - notwithstanding, the residents around the field are absolutely opposed to any sort of development on site.

My issue was your statement which said that rugby is a thuggish game. Your implication was clearly that those that play it, or support it, are thuggish and this is rude and offensive. Your statement that it is equivalent to mugging a pedestrian is equally so. I was always taught to try and be polite and inoffensive when expressing an opinion. But then I have butted up against you before magwich2 and I know your modus operandi, so, I will now bow out, well and truly.

[yoyo123]

This is beginning to get heated, remember " think twice, post once"
yoyo
mod

[Rob Clark]

Perhaps we could get back to the original question posed by the thread?

Whatever one's personal opinions of the sport and those who play it – and as I said upthread I work with rugby players a lot and like them as a group so clearly I'm going to be positively biased – what SB3 was asking was whether schoolboy rugby is safe, or rather as safe as it could be, and whether it could be made even safer.

It's a good question and one to which I don't know the answer, but I don't believe that a writer with an agenda, and a book to flog on the basis of that agenda, should be allowed to be the last word on the subject.

[yoyo123]

Perhaps we could get back to the original question posed by the thread?

Definitely

[doodles]

I'm bowing out too. I'm afraid that, for me, what was an interesting discussion has been spoiled, but I would just like to assure everyone that we are not a family of thugs with a penchant for mugging pedestrians.