Suffer The Little Children

LIKE almost every other player of my Baby Boomer generation, I learned my rugby at school, starting aged 11, when I went to secondary school. In my case (fortunately) I passed the "Qualify" and went to a Senior Secondary - Cumnock Academy.

 

In 1950s Ayrshire there were only a handful of senior secondaries - Marr College, Spiers School, Dalry High School and the Academies at Ardrossan, Ayr, Cumnock, Kilmarnock and Irvine Royal. All these schools played rugby, with Cumnock and Irvine also playing football.

 

So, for my generation, you learned your rugby at school, before passing seamlessly to the clubs. All the Ayrshire clubs, Ardrossan Academicals, Ayr, Cumnock, Dalry HSFP, Irvine, Kilmarnock, Marr College FP and Old Spierians were "open", but as a general rule the four clubs without the obvious FP suffix were largely former pupils clubs for the relevant schools.

 

Indeed, as a member of Ayr in the early 1970s, I can recall some Ayr Academicals threatening to oppose the nomination of a non Ayr Academical as captain, before wiser counsel prevailed and the nominee proved to be one of the club's finest skippers.

 

With PE teachers such as Jock McClure at Cumnock, TB Watson at Ayr and Campbell Bone at Ardrossan, you played rugby - or else. Indeed, I still find it ironic that the only Cumnock Academy pupil to openly defy "Stiffy" McClure and refuse to play "egg ball" was Jock Craig - now Director of Rugby at Ayr.

 

Anyway, you were shown the basics by a teacher who was an active club player, you progressed through the XVs and when you left school, you joined the local club, found your level and played on for as long as you wished. Indeed, one of my contemporaries turned-out in the Legends Match at the start of the season which was part of Irvine RFC's 50th anniversary celebrations, at the age of 66.

 

At school, we had a full fixture list, home and away matches against the other Ayrshire senior secondaries, plus trips to Dumfries to face Dumfries Academy and St Joseph's College, into Lanarkshire to play Hamilton Academy and Dalziel High School and into Glasgow to play the likes of Shawlands Academy, Queen's Park Secondary, Bellahouston Academy, Hyndland School, Jordanhill College School, Whitehill Secondary, we even had a fixture at first and second XV level with Keil School.

 

On a good year weather-wise, we could play some 30 matches. We also had access to the school-boys enclosure at the front at Murrayfield for the internationals, while at senior level, our better players got to play for Ayrshire and, if good enough, for Glasgow Schools.

 

Then, somewhere around the late seventies, the tide turned against school sport, the older enthusiastic teachers began to retire and their successors weren't as enthusiastic. Then came the Teachers Strike of the early 1980s, after which school football and rugby all but sank without trace.

 

Sure, in Ayrshire "Luddites" such as Brian Gilbert and John Sharkey at Marr, or Hector Crawford at Belmont Academy, fought against the rising tide of apathy, but, somewhere along the way, to be involved in schools rugby almost become a barrier to career advancement. SChools rugby withered on the vine and for all some sterling efforts at club level - Ayr being a terrific example, the club's didn't take-up the slack.

 

We now have, this season, a situation whereby there are NO state schools playing in the Brewer Dolphin Schools Cups, at the elite level. This competition has in effect become the private schools' Scottish Chamionships.

 

Nothing against private schools. As a player I simply loved rucking squealing members of Old Boys club XVs out of rucks; this was an uplifting experience for we working class thugs. However, rugby in Scotland will never prosper until it becomes classless.

 

Some clubs have excellent relations with their "feeder" schools, even to the extent of providing the rugby coaches - but, the SRU ought to be more pro-active in selling the game to today's school children, to guarantee the game's future.

 

Unless we nurture the grass roots, out top sward will wither. We could start with a really determined effort to broaden the entries to the Scottish Schools Cup. And, while I am at it, what happened to the plans to merge the Schools and Under-18s competitions into one.

 

It seems to me, the posh schools didn't fancy having to expose their little darlings to the oiks, so, it didn't happen. Shame on the SRU for not making it happen.

 

I fancy a lot of rugby-mad former PE teachers in the state sector, not least a certain W McLaren, are sitting up there in the great club house in the sky, seething into their beet at what we have allowed to happen.