So, We've Already Got "Deferred Success"...

[magicaddict]

...now we're about to enter into the world of "deferred sport".

A scottish professor of an institute nothing to do with schools or sports has suggested that the scrum be banned from school rugby.

I really don't need to say anything else, do I?

I can see it now. Top school rugby players show up in their first year at university for practice, see the scrum machine and run a mile. Oh yes, what a nation of safe individuals this would make us...

I particularly like her highlighted quote - "If youngsters were coming back from school trips with these rates of injuries it would be enough to trigger a major inquiry". Yes dear - and if school trips were as exciting or engaging as school sports then maybe the kids would be queueing up to them as well. School trips sucked all the life out of every museum or living history project I ever visited. I have returned to a lot of sites that got ruined by school trips to find that I missed more than I saw, and remain very grateful for enthusiastic parents giving me the chance to experience them properly.

At the time, however, putting on the school colours and taking five for seven on a drying wicket with just enough breeze for me to get drift as well? Getting under a high ball and being the only one on the field with the guts to try catching it, and succeeding? Walking in on the school dux as he sent his javelin five metres further down the field than any of the rest of us on our best day, just so we could be at ours before his landed? Getting so thoroughly owned on a hockey pitch it was embarrassing, but at least everyone was embarrassed together?

No fricking contest.

Take away the scrum, and next it'll be the slide tackle, then the cricket and hockey ball, then sport in general. I've already watched my music get torn up, thrown on the ground, unrinated on and dumped in a skip in the name of improving education - for fucks sake don't do it to sport as well.

Comments

[xanthipe]

At my school, touch rugby was banned due to too many broken fingers.

My girls finishing school.

Professor Pollock can put that in her metaphorical pipe and smoke it.

[dbexx.livejournal.com]

I was shit at hockey at school.
I was also hockey captain of my house and the school for two years. I loved it.
This would suck some serious balls.

[weightofeons.livejournal.com]

That's disastrous - what, are we all meant to end up playing football? Hell with that.

[pujaemuss.livejournal.com]

I saw that too. Utterly ridiculous, isn't it.

On the bright side, at least they've stopped wheeling out their stock sentence about Matt Hampson whenever they bring out this kind of story. Maybe they're learning that one instance does not make a trend?

PJW

[valient-starr.livejournal.com]

They did something similar with martial arts back at my boarding school. They stopped taking me to classes because it was too dangerous. The conversation went something like this.

"You can't go to tae-kwon-do"
"Why?"
""
"...but ballet has more injuries than tae-kwon-do. Also-" ((was about to say something about football))
"Because I said so."

I walk off and wonder "Who's being the child here?"

[undecided-guy.livejournal.com]

is it me, or have they presented the numbers in a way that makes the risk of injury look higher?

in as much as they state that there were 147 children in the survey and they sustained 37 injuries, making it look like you have a roughly 1/4 chance of being injured. But if you consider that these statistics were collected over 193 matches, each of which must have involved at least 30 players; you arrive at a much lower injuy chance of approximately 1/156 per player per match.

Similarly, preceeding from the assumption that each match has 30 players and lasts for 80 mins (the minimum value for both, although admitedly there is such a thing as sevens and younger agegroups might play shorter matches) I arrive at an injury rate of 1 per 209 player hours which is approximately half the rate they report.

[undecided-guy.livejournal.com]

actually, it strikes me that they quite possibly they only recorded the injuries sustained by the schools taking part in their study and not their opposition, at which point the injuries per player hour becomes pretty much right. and the chance of injury per player per match is 1/78. which is higher, but still not the 1/4 they make i look like without actually stating.

this does raise the question of how they counted matches betwen two shools in the study(if there were any). Because they should count as two seperate matches if that's how they're counting.

[pureferret.livejournal.com]

Andy, I think reporters don't do statistics. I really don't.

Being one of 4 who bothered turning up for training, out of our team of 14 (yeah, it sucked) I know what it'll be like when the scrumless kids turn up.

And worst case scenario, scrums keep going bad, just make them uncontested....