Holding Onto Young Players - It's Always Been Difficult

ONE OF the main points I have repeatedly made in my defence of the FOSROC Super6 experiment is – it's a lot fairer than going with what you might term “market forces” - i.e. promotion and relegation. S6 is an effort to raise standards in performance rugby in Scotland. We haven't as yet got it right, but, it's a better system than the old club system.

OK, maybe it isn't a proper 'level playing field' system, such as North American professional sport, or Australia's National Football League. These are two of the richest and best-run sporting competitions on the planet and one of the main reasons for this is, the competing clubs are tied into a CBA – a Collective Bargaining Agreement. This means the competing clubs are bound to have the same wage structures and a salary cap; in short, the attempt is to make for a truly-competitive league, where every team has an equal chance of winning.

The S6 franchise agreement isn't a complete CBA, but, it is heading that way and leaves all competing clubs more equal than does the normal league systems. For instance, there is nothing to prevent one of the Tennent's Premiership clubs recruiting an English-style rich sugar daddy and sweeping all before them. That cannot happen in S6.

Also, in the Premiership, and indeed in the National Leagues, you find, two or three teams competing for the title, another two or three hanging onto their coat tails and the rest making up the numbers. There is less of a gap (albeit with fewer numbers) between first and last in S6.

However, even I have to admit, S6 is still a work in progress. We will not see the real benefits for a wee while yet.

But, we seem to be in a hurry, demanding that our best young players, under the age of 21, be fast-tracked into S6, when, it seems very clear, few are ready.

One of the problems as I see it, with what passes for the Scottish system of developing our best young talent is – we are working with too-narrow a base.

Take our top tier of schools/youth rugby: The Inspiresport National One Schools Conference. This level of rugby is contested by seven schools: Dollar Academy, Edinburgh Academy, Fettes College, Merchiston Castle School, Strathallan School, Stewart's-Melville College and George Watson's College.

Below that, National Two is split geographically, the East Conference comprising: George Heriot's School, Glenalmond College, High School of Dundee, Loretto School and Robert Gordon's College.

The West Conference comprises six schools: Glasgow Academy, Glasgow High School, Hutcheson's Grammar School, Kelvinside Academy, Marr College, St Aloysius' College.

These then are the top 19 rugby-playing schools in Scotland, only one school Marr College is a State School, the other 18 are fee-paying private schools.

Of these 19 schools, only 9 have a direct relationship with a club side – or to be more accurate, given GHA might be the post-school destination of boys from Hutchie and St Al's; while GHK could be seen as the destination of choice for boys from Glasgow High School and Kelvinside Academy.

Also, these private schools tend in many cases to send their brighter leavers to Oxbridge or the second level English universities such as Durham or Bristol, as much as their preferred Scottish choices – Edinburgh and St Andrew's.

There is also anecdotal evidence of boys who have come through years of compulsory rugby, of having had to put in the extra hours of training and preparation demanded by their schools, once they have left, deciding, since they have not been enrolled in the SRU's performance programme, to step back from rugby, or to take it less-seriously, opting for social rugby rather than putting-in the work necessary for high-end first XV club rugby.

Since we already have fewer players, we are expecting the SRU to maintain standards from a shrinking domestic talent pool – hence their reliance on the Scottish-Qualified programme to keep the numbers up.

I was thinking back to my own school days. I left after Fourth Year, but, in writing this piece I checked-out the school magazine for what would have been my Sixth Year.

The Rugby photograph has 17 boys in it; only 7 of these were actual Sixth Year boys – the guys who had first picked up a rugby ball alongside me in First Year. Only four of these players transitioned to the local rugby club, where they were joined by a further six of us, who had left earlier.

One or two of the eventual School XV had, as was the case back then, come to our Senior Secondary in Fourth Year. So, out of something like 25 boys – the original First Year XV plus later arrivals – only ten went on to play rugby as adults.

That represents a 60% drop-out rate on leaving school. I think that was fairly typical. There is evidence that today, from smaller numbers playing rugby in schools, the drop-out rate is perhaps higher.

This is not good for the game and if the trend continues, the game will die.

It doesn't help that, in State schools, what happened back in my day is perhaps still happening. Back in the 1950s, we entered the First Year banded in how we had done in 'The Qualifying' aka The 11+.

Back then, in the East Ayrshire coalfield's only Senior Secondary there were six bands:

1. 1A (the class I was in) – expected to go through to Sixth Year then onto University. (We had Latin, which was necessary for university entry back then)

2. 1B – Also a six year banding, but, without the Latin.

3. 1C – Expectations of becoming a civil servant, or bank clerk or similar.

4. 1D – Expectation of becoming a skilled tradesman: electrician, brick-layed, joiner, motor mechanic, etc.

5. 1E – Expectation of becoming a semi-skilled artisan.

6. 1F – Report to the nearest pit on your 15^th birthday Son, you'll be digging coal.

Mind you, there were get-outs. I remember one pupil who had a horrendous 'Qualifying' and ended-up in 1D. He managed to work his way up to go right through to the Sixth Year, onto University and eventually a Professorship in Mathematics.

There isn't (as far as I know) the same early sort-out, but, I understand rugby coaches, indeed all sports coaches, still look for boys who are likely to hang around for the full six years. If they leave earlier, some might still go to the local club, but, most are lost to the game.

I have been advocating for some time, the need for the game of 'Recreational Rugby' to be devised. It has worked for other games, for instance:

• Consider the popularity of five-a-side football; the growth of centres devoted to the short form of the game.

• Consider too the popularity of Recreational Ice Hockey a game which has taken the brutality and checking of the full-fat game and adapted it to concentrate on stick-handling and skating.

Why aren't the Unions doing more to push if not a new game doing away with rucking and the collisions and selling the benefits of simply running with the ball?

Should we not maybe be doing more to promote the likes of Tartan Touch, or Walking Rugby? Let's get older people, or guys who gave-up after schools rugby back playing the game.

We've been losing players at 17 or 18 for ever, but, today, more than ever, we have to work a lot harder to try to keep them involved. If we don't, we're in trouble.