Encouraging ‘touch rugby’ could kill the game as we know it
The restarted professional game is well under way but with a somewhat pointless end to last season and without any true sign of the real game restarting. Why the RFU sanctioned full rugby (bar the spectators) for the Premiership but only touch rugby for the grassroots game may seem odd, but there is a reason.
Many could be thinking, surely if under current government rules it is ok for the professional clubs where players congregate every day to take part in contact training and playing, it should be safe for the grassroots clubs who only meet two or three times a week?
The argument that it is essential as a matter of player welfare for the professional player to take part in contact to prepare them for the rigours of the game must be even truer for grassroots players.
The professional players spend their days training in groups with close contact for games and continue with fitness training when in lockdown isolation. Whereas those from grassroots have to balance a work/life schedule and follow social distancing rules with limited close contact most days.
For many grassroots players the only time they train is at their club as part of a team in semi-opposed contact sessions between the club’s teams, which lockdown has effectively stopped.
The RFU have put out a paper explaining what it believes grassroots clubs can do under current government instructions, which amounts to a type of touch rugby.
Unfortunately, this seems to misunderstand why many people play rugby, which is the physical element and gives players who are not particularly gifted with the ‘ball in hand’’ skills a role to play within the game.
Just like Sevens, touch rugby is not a game for all shapes and sizes and may well take people out of the game rather than encouraging them to return to their clubs.
As much as it may seem the Premiership are being given a pass to ‘play on regardless’ while grassroots clubs are refused, it is not quite true.
The Premiership are testing their players regularly to try and ensure there is a minimum risk of spreading infection and have probably only restarted their season so as to avoid any claw-back of money by TV providers further damaging their finances.
Then there is the need to get the professional players back to full contact games so as to prepare them for the planned international matches this autumn.
Even with all the training in the world there is no substitute for actually playing the game.
I well remember, after the summer break and lots of pre-season training, the first few scrums of the first game –and what happened when they broke up.
The pressure in a real competitive scrum would make you see stars no matter how much you had practised against a scrum machine or live opposition.
The need for the international game to get back should be obvious to all as it is there that the vast majority of money to finance the sport is generated.
The limits that social distancing have created in the number of spectators for games at Twickenham mean that the RFU must make cuts to all parts of the game while still trying to finance their contracted obligations and debt from the new East Stand.
With the capacity reduced by around 50 per cent, they will need to play as many games as possible in a limited time frame with the highest paying group of spectators, (corporate etc), sponsors and TV providers to raise as much revenue as possible.
This is bound to raise a response by the RPA about player welfare that, unfortunately, I think will increase the costs for the union in hiring the players through extra compensation to the clubs and players.
Player welfare seems to me to be something that is used to cover a multitude of sins within the game and beyond.
Understandably, the RPA are only interested in their 1,500 or so member players and are looking to ensure that they are not disadvantaged in any way by the virus and ensuing lockdown or restart, particularly of the international game.
There is no doubt that players were, and are, the most important part of our game but in the past the players were also the bread and butter of the sport and provided the money for it to develop into the game we have today, usually at a cost to themselves.
The laws unlike now, were pretty much unchanged for years and the style of game was similar at whatever level you played which enabled players from low level clubs to play at the highest levels of the game.
Players would play at grassroots clubs to learn their trade and then use the county system to move up the representative ladder.
The move to professionalism has created a divide in the game with most professional players identified at a young age and separated from the rest of the game at Academies where a few will eventually get contracted.
However, all young players begin there rugby at the grassroots, whether school or club and the threat to the future of the game means all clubs and players at all levels must work together for the benefit of the game, if it is to survive and flourish.
“Touch rugby is not a game for all shapes and sizes and may well take people out of the game”