URC 2022 Thread

From Andy Skehan, for example. It's five years old but Michael's have, if anything, improved since then.

I've never been a fan of the wanky expression 'check your privilege' but it seems appropriate for some of the Marie Antoinette levels of delusion some people are displaying about what is normal and attainable for the Hoi polloi and what is the preserve of the elite of society.

If there wasn't such an enormous difference in facilities and environment between public and private schools, why on earth would parents be throwing 10 grand a year per child away?

The school I went to had one sort-of pitchy area of grass, zero sports coaches of any description, no PE class after first year (and that was just the janitor watching kids play basketball, in their uniforms), no equipment at all and nobody had the first clue about rugby.

And this wasn't some Strumpet City tenement setup, just a normal, bog-standard 600-student, country, catholic, public school in the 90s like so many others around the country. We had a world champion martial artist, we had kids who couldn't afford books, we had teachers who organised chess leagues and table quizzes, we had students who missed weeks of school because they worked on the farm, students whose parents had two cars and natural suntans but mostly just a few hundred kids doing their best to get by and for whom playing sport was at best a second thought.

It should be possible to have an honest conversation about how having an elite setup at underage level provided by outside sources frees up budgets that would otherwise need to be spent on funding a fully functioning high-level club game without people dismissing contributions as 'agendas/grievances'.

It should be possible to both recognise that there exists a gulf in opportunity between an expensive private school fully concentrated on rugby and a public school with neither the funding, the knowledge nor the interest to create a competitive rugby environment AND appreciate that the former goes a long way towards fostering a working professional rugby system and without it Ireland would probably be worse off than Wales.

You surely understand the difference between dimissing X and dismissing X as Y? So you're being doubly dishonest in trying to reframe the latter as the former.

For my part I have neither an agenda nor a grievance. The idea of a private school, or of playing high-level rugby, never entered my mind. I'm very happy that Ireland has a world class rugby team just as I'm cognisant of the factors that allow us to have one.

Likewise, I'm very happy to have been able to afford to buy a house and can recognise how hugely fortunate I am to be in that position. I don't go around puzzled as to why people who aren't that lucky don't simply inherit money from their grandparents.

Well don't deliberately misquote me and deliberately misinterpret me then. It's not hard.

(no idea how to multi-quote on this POS)

"Portraying non-fee-paying schools as something from the director's cut of Angela's Ashes is about as dishonest as it gets tbh."

Are you that removed from reality that an accurate description of schools with little to no funding for sports seems like Hollywood fiction?

And do you not think it's reasonable to assume that without the pipeline of players from the schools the Provinces would have to spend money on foreign imports to plug all the holes in the team?

In terms of sheer numbers if you have 10 players coming through at 18yo who look like prospects you can take most if not all of them into your academy, have them continue in a structure similar to what they're used to, pay them a nominal amount and hang on to the 3 or 4 who turn out to be the genuine article.

You can't do that with foreign players. They either come in ready to play or close to it, will need a proper salary and you can take in maximum one or two. If they don't work out, or get injured early, you're stuck and either have to spend again or compete with lesser players.

You can go through the club route and bring in a load of young players to the academy that way but they're going to be a long way behind in their development.

Using centres of excellence to supplement and eventually supplant the school system would be ideal. That could take a long time to come to fruition and the players will still have less day-to-day involvement in the sport.

If St. Kieran's is your idea of an average public school I can see where the confusion comes from.

3/4 of the intake from schools, 1/4 from clubs. Without the schools you've either 75% fewer players in the academy or you take in 6 less good players. Tector went to an elite private school.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make as everything you're saying confirms the fact that (fee-paying) schools provide the bulk of the academy and, eventually the professional squad.

25% is a good start towards expanding the player base. 50 would be a marked improvement.