Rugby isn’t about barging people out the way to win.
Or, indeed, of many other activities - choral singing, orchestral playing, scouts and guides, voluntary service. And I'm not entirely convinced that learning "to respect authority, abide by rules and to take pride in the institutions they represent" is an unalloyed good - unless it's also accompanied by an appreciation that sometimes those things lead to a very ugly place.
My playing career ended with a brain injury. But I the only thing I regret is that I didn't play more and longer. For reasons I have explained here before, as a kid from a shite estate in a new town "rugby made me", along with tlh.I played rugby at a reasonable standard as a kid (county and regional) but gave up when I was 19 after a season where I suffered three concussions. This was back in the '80s so the last knockings of amateurism, but there certainly wasn't any concern about the short or long term effects of head injuries. The choice to stop was all my own - nobody would have objected if I'd have carried on. Injuries of any kind were treated as a badge of honour and an inevitable part of the game, which looking back I resent as it left me with some longer term damage. It also explains why I'm such a handsome cove.
From a friend who's son plays rugby now, the RFL seems to make the right noises about protections for kids, but that doesn't always seem to translate fully into the actions of coaches or the behaviour of kids on the pitch.
Apologies if this has been mentioned upthread because I've only been dipping in and out, but the NFL ('merkin footy) has been going litigation-crazy over that last couple of years over the long term lack of safeguarding for concussion injuries.
That's a shame, not a complete surprise but nevertheless a shame. My experience of such parents is that it's their kids who normally jack it in at the first opportunity. They may start well but their naked aggression is soon outflanked by kids who develop skills. I watched this happen in football at least. One coach ran a team more or less with the aim to get his son playing for a top club. He failed, badly. He also lost the team management after punching a parent after an altercation when he sent out a letter saying he wasn't gonna play the shoot kids (as he saw them). Funnily enough, the shoot kids went on to form the nucleaus of the cup winning team and his son played a bit part as a substitute. My son was one of the 'shoot' kids. I think that episode taught him more about human nature than I could have ever hoped to have instilled in any talk.
About working together with a disparate group of people with utterly different skillsets, and, in the case of the backs, varying attitudes to personal risk, to achieve a common goal within an agreed, but often counter-intuitive, framework.
Not universally true, unfortunately, ime as an (ex) ref. The kids having been let down by the so-called responsible adults.
There was a time when it was thought to be the case that they did. Clearly this is now an old wives tale as the RFU's advice is
Yeah, I should have used a sarcasm smiley.
Now that's interesting - a parallel with the bike helmet argument (and no doubt the same misunderstandings).
The challenge with sevens is the slightly daft aspect of playing it on a full-size pitch. And, as an aside, school children's sevens scrums are even more unstable when contested than 15's.
