Age concern for youth game

Alan Lorimer

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Published on 13 Oct 2009
Age matters.

Well so it seems in schools and youth rugby as a raft of new guidelines and agreements have combined to cause problems for the game at under-18 level.

New SRU regulations prohibit the use of under-16 front-row players in under-18 ru gby. For all other positions permission to play is sanctioned subject to passing officially administered tests.

It is all very laudable in terms of safety but the reality is that it is making life very difficult for schools who, in the past, would have regularly included fourth-year boys in their first or second XVs.

Schools are being encouraged to field under-16 sides, but this is having a detrimental effect on senior school sides. John Sharkey, who has worked wonders to maintain a high level of rugby at Marr College, believes the consequences could be serious for his school.

“We would normally have a 2nd XV made up of S4, S5 and maybe some S6 who were never likely to play in the 1st XV. Now I do not have enough boys to make up a second team as my S4 play 
under-16. The S5/S6 boys who are not 1stXV are not enough to make up a second team and are too old to play under 16.

“There is therefore a group of boys to whom I cannot give a game of rugby. Next season I will need them to make up my senior team but they are likely to have found other things to do on a Saturday.”

A separate issue affects under-18 rugby. The accepted standard is now “under 18 on 1 January” which rules out many boys for most under-18 competitions. These include the Brewin Dolphin Scottish Schools Cup, the Scottish inter-district championship and international rugby at this age level.

This season a number of schools have opted not to play schools who do not comply with this definition of under-18. Schools that suffer from this under-18 definition are mainly Scotland’s boarding schools who take in pupils at a slightly different age and who frequently have to rejig their teams when it comes to Brewin Dolphin Cup matches.

An agreement to have a universal cut-off date for 
under-18 would simplify matters greatly and perhaps make inter-school competition fairer (and in some cases less dangerous.

This article was posted on 13-Oct-2009, 07:08 by Hugh Barrow.