to think allowing our sons to play rugby is irresponsible parenting?

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There's another article in the Times today about Professor Allyson Pollock's attempt to get people to understand how dangerous school rugby is. She's been abused on Twitter, stonewalled by other parents, ignored by Rugby's professional bodies. (Link here but behind paywall)

Basically, a combination of parental peer pressure and the Establishment mean people won't listen to what she has to say. Rugby as it is played at school at present is not safe.

AIBU to think we aren't protecting our sons? Why are we allowing this compulsory sport to put at risk so much for our boys?

I would certainly be interested to see properly collected statistically sound data around children's sport (the stats around adult rugby I personally suspect would be very different to those up to (say) 16). From what I understand, such data does not currently exist.

However, the statement "No sport should be compulsory, just some physical activity." makes me laugh.

I can imagine the scenario now. Under-resourced, underfunded school, and 153 teenagers turn round and say "I don't want to participate in [insert sport which the school has invested in qualifying coaches for], and you can't make me. I want to do [insert obscure form of physical activity] instead"

How does that work then? All that would happen is that sport (or indeed structured physical activity of any kind) would no longer happen within school, participation rates would fall still further, the population as a whole would become even more unfit, and it would be all the "fault" of the schools.

Schools have to fit the programme they provide to the facilities and staff resources they have or can get, as well as the interests of the majority of the pupils. They cannot possibly cater for free choice.

As a parent I have a choice of which school my dc attend. If I dont want them to play rugby then I ask the question when looking around and factor the response into my decision making process.

My own personal experience is that rugby at school is no riskier than other sports that my dc and their friends do at school.

What's wrong with football? Far safer, and a great game. Hockey is great too (for boys or girls). A game which is recognised as being far more dangerous than common alternatives should not be compulsory.

That's valid stealth, but my point wasn't that children should be given a range of options. Just that some physical activity was compulsory.

There are a huge range of physical activities that do not include the level of risk of injury that contact rugby does, particularly severe injury. Cross country, basketball, netball, rounders and more modern games like korfball which was designed for this issue.

They require minimal equipment and don't require qualified coaches (I believe junior rugby coaches have to be trained because of these dangers). Rugby, coached properly, requires 30 children for a start.

You don't need to qualify to coach some of these other sports, because people aren't dying playing netball.

Why would you choose to make rugby compulsory over so many more suitable sports to provide kids with exercise?

I don't want it banning, it's up to you if the benefits outweigh the risk (statistically slim, but significantly higher that all other sports traditionally played in this country) of your child ending up in a wheelchair, that's fine. I'm risk averse with regards to my children, probably too much so, and simply wouldn't do it.

Can't believe that people are using "personal experience" as evidence.

Or are we saying "broken leg playing football" = 1 injury, broken neck playing rugby = 1 injury

Therefore football is equally dangerous.....? Really?

My medics comment was in response to those who say their contacts in medicine will not allow their DC to play rugby.....

Mushy - it's ridiculous to say that parents have choice over whether their DSs play rugby because they don't have to choose that particular school. Parents shouldn't have to resort to sending their DSs to schools miles away (if they can get them into them) because the catchment area school elects to go with the most dangerous possible sport.
And your personal experience about rugby not being more dangerous is frankly worthless - proper research on this (by people who know what they're doing) clearly shows that rugby is far more dangerous than other school team games. And the injuries are often very serious - some boys have died or ended up paralysed from the neck down.

I read this article in the Times yesterday. My son is small for his age and I don't like the idea of him playing contact rugby with boys who are much bigger than he is. My husband played rugby at school and says he never saw any serious injuries but he did start picking up minor injuries when he played it at university and decided to quit while he was ahead. So are kids playing rugby with less decent supervision these days or are we just more aware of the injury-risk?

I think there are several options if you are unhappy:

Send a copy of the article into school and ask them about their risk assessment procedures and the qualifications of the PE teachers (I bet they are not qualified rugby coaches in most cases).

Schools could allow the younger kids (eg Y7 and Y8 or smaller kids eg those who are less than say 160cm high) to play tag rugby instead. Or restrict lessons to tag rugby and team rugby can be contact sport.

If you get no joy and you're still worried:

Encourage your son to forget his PE kit and take the hit on a break-time detention.

Or just tell him to stay out of scrums and tackles. He might get told off for not trying but if the school doesn't respond properly to your concerns it seems reasonable to me.

My son only had rugby for about four weeks last winter, they soon swapped onto other sports. On that basis I am not too concerned, but if I were to find he was playing it every week to the exclusion of other sports I would take the steps I've mentioned above. We should have a choice, where there are sensible options available such as other sports and tag rugby.

Sport in schools is rubbish anyway if you don't have natural talent. Look at cross-country - has anyone ever been taught how to run longer distances? Nope, they all sprint for 200m and then collapse. The kids who don't are the ones who've gone to parkrun or joined an athletics club and been coached properly.

Ds (14) both plays rugby and cycles competitively. He is talented at both.

I don't watch a rugby game with my heart in my my mouth, yet I do that at cycling races (both "road" and track).

I've seen multiple broken collarbones and concussions with ambulances called at cycling events, yet have only rarely seen injuries at rugby games (although ironically, ds' broken collarbone was sustained at rugby training and his black eye at a cycling event ).

Rugby is a dangerous sport and I agree it shouldn't be compulsory. I know that both at ds' school (an SRU funded "School of Rugby" trying to introduce rugby to more children in a football dominated city) and his rugby club, safety is taken extremely seriously. A concussion means a compulsory 2 (3?) week ban from playing - unlike in cycling, where a concussed cyclist can choose to cycle again whenever he/she wants to.

A lot of the research on head-injury induced dementia is coming from rugby and American Football - yet the reason I know this is because my own mother has contributed to this research as a result of her induced dementia (and ultimately death) from a cycling accident

Life is indeed a balance.

Rugby, coached properly, requires 30 children for a start. I agree with most of your points but to be pedantic youth/mini rugby at most levels doesn't actually require 15 a side eg under 12's have 13 a side as a rule.

'My own personal experience is that rugby at school is no riskier than other sports that my dc and their friends do at school.'

Your personal experience is what Prof Pollock is challenging. She's pointing out that actually, rugby is more dangerous and that rugby parents just aren't happy to hear it. That by letting our sons play school rugby the risk in volume and severity of head injury or spinal injury or other injury is considerably higher than, say, tennis or football.

My son hates football and will do the alternative of doing laps rather than play it. The idea of sports as school is to introduce them to a wide range of activities that they might not have had the chance to play before.

The issue here is not the game itself, its the level of coaching as well as proper warms ups and downs. The issue is should schools be playing any sports if they don't have adequate time? All sports used to be double sessions at my senior school but it seems sports time has been reduced and they appear, again can only speak for the two secondary schools I have experience of, to only have 1 or 2 single lessons a week. The showers have been dropped (can you imagine a class of hormonal sweaty teenagers back in uniform after playing rugby/football or running without a shower?), so important procedures such as the warm ups are either not carried out or are too quick, as they only have 40 minutes total.

Club rugby, the match is at 12 say, the team arrive at 10.30, get changed, carry out proper warm ups, then train/practice, then play the match. After the match they have a warm down session, then showers and get changed and then go and have lunch with the opposition. This is for the u13's. the same thing happens at ds2's u18's. When they played at younger age groups they still arrived early and warmed up and down but didn't shower and eat. they could shower but most chose to go home.

Schools realistically don't have the time to do this. They do on the Saturday matches that ds plays in, but don't in normal pe lessons.

Perhaps the issue I needing to look at sport s a whole, either the lessons need to be changed to reflect that any sport requires warm ups/downs and proper coaching. perhaps just practice should be taking place and not matches with lax attitudes to the correct procedures? I would hate for there to be less pe at school though. Pe is important, I and many others will now play sports because we started at school. I doubt very much if I would have taken up netball or cross country running if I hadn't have played it at school. Lets not forget we are living in a time when obesity levels are rising and children are less active, we should be encouraging them to enjoy sports not seeing it as something that has to be endured.

The issue with the concussion bans are that overcompetitve coaches and players are covering up concussions to avoid weakening their teams, the pros don't help as they do it and wear it as a badge of honour.

I get your point about cycling, but again that is a sport id consider dangerous. The point is that all compulsory sport activities at schools should be taken from the "safe" list. We can sit here all day saying "it's safer than ropeless Rock climbing"

Whatever happened to running shuttles in PE and climbing ropes?!

muminhants I really disapprove of schools dipping in and out of contact sports like rugby - 4 weeks of probably one hour a week isn't enough to learn to play contact sports safely.

Boys like my son have played tag rugby from 7 then have had contact very slowly introduced over several years. This year he learnt how to tackle safely, fall safely and thats it for contact this year - a whole season of 2 hours a week just practicing tackling and falling.

A few lessons for a few weeks in the winter really isn;t a good idea IMO.

'The issue is not the game itself'

The issue is the game itself: contact at speed/weight/force, scrums, tackles, line outs. It is about whether this is appropriate for a school sport.

Rugby occupies a special part in much of the nation's consciousness - does this come at a cost to our children? And aren't many schools basically risking children's future activity levels by putting them through a sport with really high rates of low-level chronic injury, nevermind the more serious stuff?

Ifyourawizardwhy They'll need some stout gloves for those book though. Some of those pages can be quite sharp y'know?

"What's wrong with football?"

...ooh, you could let my DS loose on that one and write off the next few hours . How about that it massively favours one body type (small, agile) whereas the different roles within a rugby team allow different people to shine? Or the dubious role models which the professional game presents (you don't see rugby players arguing with the ref or going to court to overturn a red card)? There is lots wrong with football. I am not suggesting that rugby is free of problems or totally inclusive, and had I actually seen any data which related specifically to to the children's game then I would be prepared to accept that it is in fact less safe than alternatives, but football is not a good alternative IMO - although I would suspect that most rugby-playing schools also play football anyway (and, at a senior level, hockey as well).

So the moral of the story is don't do anything risky or dangerous? Because a professor says so

I saw someone fall of a horse and shatter their pelvis yesterdaythe horse went mad, animals are so unpredictable!

Addtobasket tennis is a bizarre comparison. I'd compare to football, boxing and cycling.

And again I personally think it shouldn't be compulsory. But please don't use arguments like its more dangerous than tennis! It just makes you look a bit unhinged!

DS loves tennis but it in no way compares to the physicality of rugby. Ironically DS is goalie in football and I think has had more kicks to the head and hands then for rugby!

I accept your point about competitive coaches and players the Welsh team doctors should be struck off for starters

Ds' club is "Positive Coaching Accredited" and as such, safety and a positive ethos is very important. Dh is both a coach and a referee and safety is his prime concern.

We actually had a player take himself off recently as he couldn't remember the game. No one had seen the contact that caused it - and he can't remember it

I agree again that it shouldn't be compulsory.

Surely the whole argument can be summed up by saying those who allow their sons/daughters to play rugby aren't irresponsible parents. It would be irresponsible to have rugby as a compulsory sport in any education establishment.

I think to some extent the discussion of comparitive injuries is moot. It is whether rugby is taught safely in schools to minismise risk.

I don't agree Prof. Pollock can challenge personal experience - she cannot change one's personal experience and for some, many, people, rugby will be played without incident.

Kewcumber, the discussion is about school sport. Therefore, the comparisons are, other school sports.

In my admittedly limited experience football favours bigger boys - that's the way the game has gone in this country, at a higher level.

Riding a horse is certainly dangerous - I don't think anyone would deny that? The point is, it's not compulsory in schools.

stealth- I wholeheartedly agree with you with regards to football.

ds1 plays football and its full of prima donna behaviour and young lads thinking that they are the next superstar.

I don't think that those that have dc who play the sport properly are going to agree with the op and others that support the banning of rugby. I want conclusive evidence either way to support the argument. I am inclined to say that there are a number of sports that should not be played at school as most schools just do not have the ability to carry them out properly.

YANBU, OP.

It is so much harder to challenge something which is so established, especially amongst the generations-old public school crew who, let's face it, largely run the country. Look what else has been accepted (boarding school at 7, ritualised bullying, etc.) by the "well it never did me any harm" brigade.

It's not just the poshies though. Heading the ball in football also has bad long term consequences, but no one listens when neuropsychologists try to tell people. Infuriating. Makes you want to bash your head against a brick wall...