Russell Crowe: Junior league must move from age to weight divisions
RUSSELL CROWE: The single greatest move that rugby league needs to make right now is to switch all junior competitions to weight, not age. Do you agree? Vote here.
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The single greatest move that rugby league needs to make right now is to switch all junior competitions to weight, not age.
A massive brain and community involvement drain happens in the game between the under 12s and the under 14s.
Right from the time kids are little, we should class them by weight and pit skill against skill.
At 18 you would play in an open environment but, until then, players should be allowed to love the joy of competition and not be forced to contend with opposition twice and more their size.
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I had the deepest privilege this past year to afford the time to witness an entire season of Souths Juniors football.
It is such an extraordinary community gift that so many people bestow, the officials, those in the canteens and the coaches, on fields all across South Sydney every weekend. It’s astounding and humbling.
Souths Juniors have done so well in monitoring players and crowds alike and providing a safe atmosphere for kids.
There’s still moments. It wouldn’t be rugby league without them. The grey-haired grandmother and the younger pregnant woman punching on in a picturesque suburban oval car park, drawing blood ... how do you explain that to anyone on the drive home?
Back to the positives. I witnessed some incredible games, incredible skills, blowouts, nailbiters, everything we know the game possesses, there in front of me, in miniature, week in, week out.
I also saw 11-year-old’s break elbows, wrists, be “mildly” concussed, head slammed and battered.
On every occasion it was a much larger player exerting physical dominance over skill.
Whether you like it or not, New Zealand Rugby Union is the torchbearer for ball-in-hand sports in our part of the world.
I believe their dominance and consistency is based on the weight system they apply in junior football.
It keeps the brains in the game longer, lets adrenaline be about competition and not fear.
Part of the nostalgic beauty for me of spending a season going from ground to ground in the juniors’ comp last season was remembering 1975, when we lived as a family at the Regent Hotel in Kingsford.
My dad was the hotel manager and I got to play, for one season, in that very same Souths Juniors comp.
I also played for Rainbow Street Primary the same year. So I played two games a week, crisscrossing the same territory.
I was literally having flashbacks, ha, seriously, remembering tries and lost opportunities and nifty little grubbers for touch ... it was cathartic and wonderful ...
Later in my life I got to play two seasons of rugby union in New Zealand at Auckland Boys Grammar.
Ex-All Black captain DJ Graham was the headmaster and future All Black coach Graham Henry the was the sports master.
Still as a young boy, in the very weight system I’m advocating, they were the two most enjoyable years of footy I ever experienced.
The weight restrictions made the focus about skill.
Rugby league is the game our kids are drawn to, it’s the game we should be happy to let them play.
It’s fast, it requires all the skills, it’s the game their heroes play.
I believe the future of the game is making decisions that mums and dads recognise as being on behalf of their kids.
Weight divisions, not age divisions. Right there is the true fortune for rugby league into the future.
It’s people. Keeping the people involved.
The only argument that gets thrown up is that an 11-year-old shouldn’t play against a 14-year-old of equal size because there is some kind of emotional difference.
You go find any backyard, back alley football game that kids organise themselves and you’ll always see a disparity of ages. That’s the natural way kids play.
It’s a game, there are rules to learn. A five-year-old can play a 50-year-old in monopoly.
It’s a pointless argument because we are talking about a game of physical contact and the pertinent question has to be safety first, and that’s what I’m saying we should focus on.
Making the game the safest we can for our kids.
We all know in our youth we are made of rubber and we bounce back, but no 11-year-old should be swung through the air by a player twice his/her weight, using his/her frame as a fulcrum to force the opponent into the ground with such force that his/her elbow is broken.
Where’s the fun part of that?
A weight system respects the game and respects fairness in competition. I’m not saying it eliminates injury, but it certainly eliminates the weight of impact smaller players have to endure.
One game I watched, the assumed difference between the smallest on one team and the largest on the other was pushing 60kg. Think about that. These are kids. It’s unsafe and patently unfair.
If rugby league doesn’t do something quick to reassure parents that we put the welfare of the kids who want to play the game as our priority, then the greatest game of all will wither at its roots.
Keep the numbers in the game, stop the brain drain and a generation from now, or maybe only a decade, league will be bigger, better, more inclusive and more exciting than it has ever been exactly because of the refined skill level across the board and that more people have stayed directly connected to the game for longer.