AIC schools decision to include AFL and NRL will shrink the rugby talent pool

ONE of the code’s most valuable breeding grounds has provided a leg up to a couple of sports that would happily accept those who might otherwise be on the track to a future with the Wallabies or the Reds.

Generic football shots. Steeden Rugby League NRL football, soccer ball and Sherrin AFL football. sport / balls

YOU can forget about the Wallabies Bledisloe Cup drought.

Don’t worry about the Reds’ lack of success over the past five years. It doesn’t matter about some of the game’s clunky laws or inconsistent adjudicating, and there’s no point in scratching your head trying to work out ways to prevent the talent drain to overseas clubs.

As for contemplating solutions for the imperfect makeup of the Super Rugby competition, and any lost sleep about whether the game in Western Australia can recover from the shabby treatment afforded to the Force — it’s all small bickies.

Rugby has just been hit by what may ultimately prove its toughest challenge. One of the code’s most valuable breeding grounds has provided a leg up to a couple of sports that would happily accept those who might otherwise be on the track to a future with the Wallabies or the Reds.

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With the Associated Independent Colleges announcing a two-year trial to include rugby league and AFL among their footballing options for students, alongside rugby and soccer, alarm bells are ringing in all sorts of different ways.

Rugby has always copped criticism for the “old school tie” connections and with it, accusations of elitism.

It’s true that rugby would not have had much of a foundation without its history in the private schools, but I’ve always believed there were equal numbers of snobs in soccer, rugby league and AFL as there might be in rugby, so I’ve never paid any credit to such cheap and uninformed sniping. Either way, it will have to stop now, as the AIC goes the way of the world.

That is, give everybody what they ask for. Feed that sense of entitlement everyone seems to believe is theirs.

Disregarding what the decision might mean for rugby in the long term should the two-year trial become permanent, my first concern is for the kids.

Earlier this year I wrote about the excessive pressure some schools are exerting on their sporting teams to not just excel, but to win.

A friend of mine at a rugby-playing private school suggested, only half-jokingly, that the boys were all determined to play for the Reds because if they did, they knew they wouldn’t have to train as hard as they’ve had to at school.

With gym and field sessions for the rugby boys starting in the Christmas holidays for an eight-game season many months away, what happens if someone wants to try his hand at AFL in the first term, rugby in the second term and rugby league in the third term?

Isn’t affording the students such an option the whole point of the exercise?

I’m not convinced that the first XV coach will want to see his star players dabbling in other codes and risking injury.

Suddenly, there’ll be boys having to pick one code or the other, which surely is counter-productive to the implementation of the plan.

The schools have a lot of thinking to do in how this is all going to work, while rugby has to find a way to prevent its greatest talent pool becoming shallower by the year, particularly if other rugby-playing schools associations follow the lead of the AIC.

A national schools strategy has been developed under the guidance of former Wallabies captain Paul McLean, but the decision by the AIC has added a great deal of urgency to the work he is doing.

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Originally published as AIC schools decision to include AFL and NRL will shrink the rugby talent pool