Genge’s claims of prejudice are echoed in junior cricket
ENGLAND rugby union star Ellis Genge delivered a damning indictment last week of the culture of prejudice at the heart of his sport. We should do well to listen to the burly prop forward.
Genge was referring not to racism, but to another disturbing and destructive prejudice – the prejudice of snobbery, the prejudice of status, the prejudice of money.
The 23-year-old, a rare example of a player succeeding in rugby from an under-privileged working class background, describes the feeling with pain and bitterness.
“When I was 16, 17 and 18, I never made any of my age-group teams,” he said.
“I feel that’s because my face didn’t fit. I’m not white middle class – I’m working class. I put it down to culture. The way people are raised and brought up.
“There is that private-school mould in rugby. It’s stopping the game from progressing and it’s painful.
“I have friends working on scaffolding sites back home who are
quicker than Jonny May. That’s where football has cracked it. Is rugby really grass roots?
“When I was younger I never felt comfortable sitting in the clubhouse having my chips and sausage because I just felt everyone was looking at me and thinking, ‘Who the hell is this?’”
England head coach Eddie Jones, in jest, calls him the gangster.
“He uses that name for anyone who’s not from a private school,” says Genge in explanation.
In the latest England rugby training camp, 50 per cent of the squad had been to a private fee-paying school. That is 18 players.
Five of the remaining 18 had their education abroad, and seven of the others are aged 29 or over.
The figures show a clear trend of the game fast becoming a preserve of the rich, entitled elite.
It appears to be the same story in English cricket, where a majority of international and county players were educated in the private sector. To put this into context, just seven per cent of youngsters attend those schools. The imbalance is startling and alarming.
Former England captain Mike Brearley, one of the most intelligent observers of sport, admits he is deeply concerned.
“It is one of my greatest worries about the future of cricket in this country,” Brearley told me recently.
“Something like 60 per cent of the England team went to private schools. More than 50 per cent of county cricketers went to private schools – and there are kids who don’t know anything about cricket at all.”
My own experience confirms the trend. I spent a decade working in county age-group cricket, and I saw at first hand how the game at that junior elite level is increasingly dominated by youngsters who attend private schools where the facilities are often superb, where coaching is high class, and where cricket is an integral part of school life.
There is another reason, too, for what is occurring.
It is that the best young cricketers who begin their education at state schools are lured into the private system by scholarships.
Of course, this can be hugely beneficial to individual youngsters, but every time one takes this route it is another blow to cricket in state schools. The best kids are looked up to as an example in every sphere – but they can’t be if they simply aren’t there.
Slowly, distressingly, cricket in state schools is ebbing away; a reality that dismays Brearley, and should dismay us all.
“We need to help everyone to love cricket rather than just the ones who are talented,” said Brearley, pain in his voice.
His words echo the sentiments of Ellis Genge, and we should listen to them both.
Rugby union and cricket are the most popular spectator sports in this country after football. They belong to us all right now – but that will change if they become dominated by the privileged few.
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