100-point wins don't do anyone any good

There is no scoreboard, I’m told, at the field where an under-14 rugby team notched up a 104-0 win at the weekend, so at least we were spared the celebratory photo with the score in the background, but there was still a fair amount of gloating by the people associated with the winning school.

I’m not naming names. The losers have been humiliated enough, and it’s really not about particular schools, there’s, surely, a principle here.

You’ll remember that last year a team that won 221-0 posed in front of those numbers and the photo was posted on the school’s Twitter and Facebook sites. I commented at the time that it was as sickening as those pictures that you see of so-called hunters posing over the carcasses of slain lions or elephants. I have the same nausea again today, and it’s an appropriate comparison, because rugby players who are willing to turn out for the lower teams in the junior age groups are rapidly becoming an endangered species and we should be doing all we can to conserve them, just like we should be looking after those magnificent wild animals.

There were some right-minded people who commented on Saturday’s posting and they said what should be obvious: allowing a rugby game between 13 year-olds go to over 100 points is an abomination. It does no-one any good, not the winners nor the losers, and worse, it encourages the mothers of those humiliated (and probably physically battered) players to withdraw them from the game.

Now, if you think badly coached and unskilled rugby players aren’t also important you need to take a breath and think about it. In the first instance, the quality of any elite side depends on the numbers below, reduce the base of the pyramid and the apex will be lower. Those involved in sport as part of the educational process have a duty to make their teams as good as they can be, but they also have a responsibility to the greater game. It’s also a matter of self-interest. What are they going to do when there is no-one left to play against?

And their duty to their players includes developing their character – there’s no profit in breeding braggarts and bullies, and scoring more than a point a minute is purely that: it’s bragging and it’s bullying.

Some in the comments section question the value of helping out those strugglers – let them learn the lessons of standing up against a superior force and taking their punishment like men, they say.

It really shouldn’t be necessary to point out that that’s the language of the fascist, of the colonial master and the child-beating parent. Is it really what a fine educational institution wants to be saying? And those who know who I’m talking about will agree that all four schools – the beaters and the beaten – in the two stories I tell, are all among the very best schools in the land.

No. Tell your testosterone-charged young coaches to reign it in, instruct referees to protect the weaker teams and re-introduce the rule, that used to exist, of stopping the game when the score reaches 50-0.

It’s the right thing to do.