Acedemy system needs changing to make rugby more accessible PROBYN
England prop claims working class players are discriminated against. What a headline! Ellis Genge (who grew up on a Bristol housing estate) said he has experienced a bias against players from working class backgrounds.
It is too simplistic to say there is a bias against working class players, as there are a number of reasons why there may not be as many of those players at the top of the game.
First, the game isn’t played in a majority of the 3,268 state schools but is played, according to the RFU, in around 1,500 (just under half) of the state funded secondary schools.
Sadly it is a fact that the state schools, although offering rugby as one of a number of sports they provide for children, will not have the specialist equipment, facilities and coaches that can be found in the private sector schools.
Moreover, the majority of the selectors for school county rugby are attached to private schools, which is the first level of representative rugby and where academy selection first takes place. What makes matters worse is a number of schools in the independent sector are now de facto feeder schools for Premiership clubs. This gives players from those schools a bigger advantage in getting selected for the Premiership club academies.
A few independent schools have, over many years, built a reputation for providing age grade county and England players and, in order to maintain their status, seek out talented rugby players in the state school sector to give them scholarships, with current England star Maro Itoje a prime example.
The professional age may have moved the goal posts a bit, but rugby is still about which school you attend and that could depend on what your parents can afford, or if you are good enough to get a scholarship.
The history of the game as an amateur sport until just 23 years ago didn’t help either, as only people who could afford the time off work were able to play at the highest levels of the game.
Lions tours for example. These lasted anything up to three months with the team playing up to 21 games from the first tour in the early 1900’s through the 1970’s and 80’s, and were still playing around 14 games on the last tours of the amateur days.
International tours in those days also took place over a number of weeks, so players were restricted to those who could persuade employers to give them time off work, or forfeit annual holidays.
As for the bias that Genge says he has experienced: I consider it is not a bias against any particular section of society, it is purely about opportunity, desire and persistence to gain your place.
I also came from a working class background, born in Shoreditch in the middle of London at a time when there were no playing fields or green spaces in the borough big enough for a football or rugby pitch.
At the time the vast majority of people in that part of London didn’t have an interest in rugby let alone having seen it played. Football was and is still king, being a professional sport where you could earn a good living from as far back as the 1870’s. And it can be played anywhere, on grass pitches or concrete playgrounds.
If I had gone to a local school I wouldn’t have played rugby but being the younger of two brothers, I was sent to the same school (The London Nautical school) as my elder brother.
It was a state school for boys near Waterloo with no playing fields. This meant travelling to Morden in Surrey at the end of the Underground a couple of times each week to train and play.
At 15 I was selected for the Surrey county ‘in term’ team, a squad of players mainly from state schools, because the public school boys were not allowed to play for the county during school term.
The ‘out term’ side were selected just before the selection of the age grade England team at the expense of the ‘in term’ players, with a combination side normally playing an end of season tour without those selected for England age grade teams.
It would have been extremely easy to look at this as a ‘bias’ against working class kids, but there were also a number of public school boys who didn’t get selected either, for the reason that they didn’t attend the ‘right’ schools.
Fortunately for us, even though the boys from the ‘chosen schools’ made the England age grade teams, very few made it at senior level, so for those of us with the desire, determination and per- sistence to keep playing, the opportunity was finally there to make the full England side.
The list of England players from a working class background has steadily grown since the mid 70’s through to professionalism. However, the advent of a limited number of academies linked to Premiership clubs and the links those clubs have with a few schools in the independent sector has seen a decline in the opportunity for all players not attending the chosen few schools.
Now the Premiership have in part been taken into private ownership with the investment by CVC, the RFU should look seriously at removing the academies from the Premiership clubs and moving them to independent universities.
Only by breaking the link between Premiership clubs and a small group of independent schools will the chances increase of a more interesting, diverse player pool that will greatly benefit all.
“Rugby is still about which school you attend and that could depend on what your parents can afford”