There was an article on one of the rugby sites recently, reporting player movements ahead of next season. It wasn’t about the URC,
or the Currie Cup. The author was speaking about the transfer of schoolboy
players between schools. He was referring to 15-, 16-, and 17-year-old rugby
players, using the same language that you read in discussions of English Premier
League player movements during the transfer window.
The author claims to be privy to discussions that should really
only be between parents and the schools their boys are at (and going to), and
between the heads of the schools involved. That those conversations should be
public in the public domain tells me we are in far worse trouble that I feared.
And we are in trouble. The educational principles that lie
at the foundation of everything that happens at, or in the name of a school –
at that includes sport – are increasing being compromised, or even abandoned,
in the cause of winning.
And rugby, like it or not, is the most prominent and popular
of all the games played at schools in this country, and winning rugby games has
taken on importance that seems to override logic and common decency. Winning
becomes the dominant value and, because people are prepared to do what it takes
to uphold their values, that means winning at all costs.
That’s what has led to the situation described in that
article. Scouting and recruitment of talented players, wherever they are, has
become an industry and the transactions implied don’t come cheap.
But that’s not all. All manner of other practices are
becoming more and more prevalent at school level. Early specialisation is one
of them. You’ll battle to find a reputable child psychologist or sports
physiologist who will tell you that teenagers should be putting all their time
and energy into one activity, all year-round. Yet, schools start their
preparations for next year’s winter at the start of the previous year’s summer,
demanding (and often getting) 1st choice when it comes the time of
the boys, and the use of the school’s fields and facilities.
Because rugby success has become a measure of the worth of a
school (as crazy as that notion is), it didn’t take long for the school sport sites
to come up with a way of measuring schools against each other – seeing that
there are no leagues – by publishing regularly updated ranking lists.
Now, they are obviously farcical: you cannot compare apples
and oranges, no matter how much you might come up with formulas, explanations
and algorithms. But parents and old boys – not groupings that are renowned for
their ethical attitudes to winning and losing – love them and keenly follow
their updates.
The headmasters of schools, almost to man, don’t approve.
They actually shouldn’t approve of anything I’ve described above, and they all
signed a document saying they don’t, years ago.
Yet the rankings persist and multiply, and they generate the
clicks. Taking them out of the equation would be a good place to start in
getting the entire sport back on an educational track. And doing so is
possible. Schools should simply stop sending in their results to those sites and
order the compilers of ranking lists to leave them out. Legal action should be
threatened, if necessary, it’s that important.
The Schools Sport Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2017
by the heads of State and Independent Schools doesn’t mention rankings
specifically – they weren’t much of a thing back then - but the principles
agreed to in it certainly don’t allow for a ranking system. In my opinion there
is no reason why the heads of schools shouldn’t simply refuse to be part of
one.
Just about all of the top sport schools are part of the
agreement. Without them in it, the ranking system will wither and die.
It’s a good place to start, and as we head into a new year,
now’s a good time.
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