Is schools rugby ending?

[Durkah Durkah]

My son informed me that his rugby coach told him that they will not be playing as many games next year due to a decision made in the budget??? I'm pretty sure that schools rugby was not mentioned by the minister(!) but before I call the school and make a complete arse of myself could anyone shine any light on this. Or has my son been in the front row too long!!!

[simonno6]

No i think its safe for now! Maybe the likes of rock may have to cut back on Jonah Lomu personal appearances but that should be about it...

[Leinsterman]

My son informed me that his rugby coach told him that they will not be playing as many games next year due to a decision made in the budget??? I'm pretty sure that schools rugby was not mentioned by the minister(!) but before I call the school and make a complete arse of myself could anyone shine any light on this. Or has my son been in the front row too long!!!

Cutbacks announced in the budget will affect school budgets. This means that essentially there could be reductions in teacher levels – thus affecting the number of teachers available to look after extra-curricular activities such as sports! No overtime = no training

[future international]

fee paying schools will be fine..and that's all that really matters

oh no,no more st.pauls its a sad day....

[Buenavista]

While it may not be ending it will certainly be impacted upon in a very significant way.
Let me explain:
1. Each school is given a budget for supervision and substitution ( to cover illness, trips etc.)
2. Pre budget the govt would also top up this fund to ensure school trips etc could take place, as well as uncertified sick leave cover for teachers absent etc.
3. Now a school will have to use their budget to cover illness and possibly curriculum related trips.
4. Knock on effect.. no money to cover teachers who will be absent taking matches/tours/away trips.Therefore no trips/tours/away matches. This also means that little Johnny's geography trip and english theatre trip are also under threat.

This will have impact on your son by:
1. Few or no away matches that cannot be travelled to outside school. ( Schools outside a city like Roscrea, Kilkenny, Rockwell etc could be f@@ked...excuse my French)
2. No tours/trips etc that may have left early Friday morning for weekend etc. I know of one school who had regular trip to England which is now postponed/cancelled as the school cannot guarantee the cover for the classes.
3. Cup matches: no supporters at cup matches as teachers cannot be released to be supervised.

This will impact the school:
1. Hugely if they do not take Wednesday afternoons off for sports or not play on Saturday mornings.
2. They may not be able to fulfill fixtures that are not within a short travelling distance.
3. It just generally makes a sh!t of the atmosphere in the school.
4. Discipline will be affected. There should always be a teacher involved in some form with each team to maintain discipline, school ethos etc. If some schools begin to rely on outside coaches problems will follow, trust me I've seen it in schools already with outside coaches and no teachers. Win at all costs mentality helps nobody for a start.

This will impact rugby:
1. Development cups etc will not be run...most of these schools do not have the Weds afternoon off, nor the resources to pay part time coaches to take the teams.
2. Schools outside city limits will have problems getting fixtures and league matches may not be completed.
3. Cup matches- who is going to travel to play a cup match in Portlaoise/Donnybrook/Drogheda without a teacher to supervise?

While schools rugby is not ending it will be hurt. So there you go. I am a teacher, rugby coach and can see the impact it may have, I'm not scaremongering. The branches need to lobby in a similar manner as the GAA already are, parents and interested parties like yourselves should also be lobbying TDs etc.

It is not the biigest challenge facing schools from the budget ( believe me there are worse!) but if you like me believe that sport is an integral part to a students education and well being then be worried! And its not just rugby, its all sports, girls and boys.

Hopefully now you can ring the school with a bit more info!

[Buenavista]

"fee paying schools will be fine"
talking out your hole!They won't. Come up with something constructive or crawl back under the snob tree and suck the silver spoon thats hanging out yer arse then!

[Xplosive]

The situation is a lot worse than simonno6 and futureinternational seem to think. ALL extra curricular activity in schools is under threat!! The Govt (We) are basically turning our education system into a budget exercise. Everything apart from the absolute bare minimum is gone.

[thecoolfreak]

What it means is that it will go back to the way it used to be with teachers doing the coaching and each team won't have 3 or 4 outside coaches each. It doesn't mean the end of schools rugby or anything like it. As far as i know the teachers involved in after school rugby don't get paid for it, they do it for the love of the game. So cutbacks aren't going to prevent rugby going ahead

[simonno6]

What it means is that it will go back to the way it used to be with teachers doing the coaching and each team won't have 3 or 4 outside coaches each. It doesn't mean the end of schools rugby or anything like it. As far as i know the teachers involved in after school rugby don't get paid for it, they do it for the love of the game. So cutbacks aren't going to prevent rugby going ahead

Of course the teachers get paid for after school activities, along with former students like myself who assist them in coaching the underage teams. Maybe they will have to cut down on the numbers of past-pupils they employ to help.

Top rugby schools like the one I work in employ seniors coaches to Teach a subject or two and coach rugby. These top coaches also take an AIL team in the evenings. These guys want to forge a living from coaching rugby teams and teaching facilitates that. And they can be well paid by drawing wages from the teaching and coaching two teams. They do it for the love of the game and the fact that they have built a decent career out of it. (By working very long hours mind you)

But even down the age-groups in the school and at the lower levels, there are coaches whose roots are in GAA. They certainly dont take 100 U13's three times a week 'for the love of the game'. They do it because it supplements their quite poor initial teaching wage.

[Buenavista]

A couple of problems I see:
1. No school taking rugby seriously has enough teachers to take teams. Fact. If a school has say 2 u13 teams, 2 u14 teams etc already that is 4 teachers minimum ( if it is only teachers and not part time coaches) Outside coaches are brought in to do 2 things: to improve coaching standards and provide a different voice and also to provide bodies on the sideline. You cannot have a team playing unsupervised or have one teacher/coach shifting between two matches.
2. If schools are under pressure financially extra curricular activities will go/lessen.. rugby being one of the first, no matter how seriously the school takes it, or how much fees they take.
3. Many teachers in fee paying schools are paid - true. However they are often paid considerably less than those outside coaches. So the first to go may be the outside coaches to balance the books. Without taking away from the teachers ( I am one of them) we are often ones who may be from different sporting backgrounds and may not have as much expertise.. so knock on effect.. standard of coaching may go down.

But seriously overall we cannot say that sport in general will not suffer. No school with any serious attitude to its students, sport or its ethos should be sending a team out without a teacher involved in some way ( even if not main coach). The issue may not be what happens after school in training but what happens on a Wednesday when a team must travel and a teacher needs to released from class to travel.. lets say they need to get 2 classes covered to travel for a 2:30 kick off. A school will likely say in the new year that this can't happen as there is only so much money in the pot and this must be kept for covering illnesses, and orals etc.
Alos cup matches. I've said this in previous post.
Many parents and those not directly involved in the management of school and its sports teams simply do not realise this. The show may not go on..not because the peopleinvolved don't want it to, but simply because a schools priority has to be covering classes for academic purposes fiirst. All schools take sport seriously, all teachers involved take it seriously but if the resources are not there what can be done? Its not a case of just raising fees etc. that is also a blinkered attitude and does not take into account the good work the branch has done in developing rugby in schools where rugby nay not be the tradition.(most of them non fee paying)
Less matches= less rugby= lowering of standard= slow and sad death of high quality schools rugby.
less teachers available= less teams= less players= less rugby.
all schools affected: fact
fees does not equal everything is ok. In a time of recession cuts have, are and will be made. You can't just siphon fees off to rugby no matter how much you or I may want to.. a school is academic first.
Teachers are not obliged to take a sport although most of us do. Most because we love the game. Its really only in fee paying schools you get paid. There is no obligation to coach, nor is there an obligation to be paid for it.
I could go on but hopefully those of you who look at this get the point..

[bunty85]

I know of a school where I heard the outside coaches are been paid supplemented by players parents, sponsors and benevolant past pupils outside even the 'fees' the parents already pay, largely because of the principal of this school who already dislikes 'extra curricular' activities. They'll be grand in this.

[Buenavista]

Just goes to show what an uneven playing field it can be for many of the schools and how difficult it can be to actually develop rugby and win matches when up against that.

[Durkah Durkah]

I contacted the school and the fact that coaches/teachers are being paid to take extra-curricular activities is not the issue, although it may become one down the road. The immediate issue, which Buenavista mentioned earlier, is that when a teacher takes a team for a match DURING school time, the classes they miss must be covered by someone else/another teacher. This someone else has always been paid by the Dept of Education. This is the same for Geography field trips, History trips, Young Scientist Exhibition, etc and all sports reasons. The Dept has said that from January they will only pay people covering a class for an absent teacher due to illness.
As a result, any away games will have to be played against schools who are near by so that the game, and the journey, can occur outside of school time. This effectively means that schools outside the metro area are going to suffer e.g. Newbridge, Kilkenny, Roscrea, et al. Also the traditional big warm up to a cup game will have to stopped or a non-teaching coach will have to look after it, and the support from the school could arrive late, if at all, if the venue for the match is far away.
Rightly the school are more concerned with the knock on effect this is going to have on academic matters with field trips ending. They are also unsure if the Young Scientist competition will take place in January as there is supposed to be a teacher from each school present at all times and the school will now be unable to release a teacher.
I wasn't aware of any of this happening. How come the public have not been told of this development?

[Buenavista]

It has been in the media but the government have been very savvy on how it has been presented. Also there are other issues which have been a little more prominent e.g class sizes and reduction of teacher numbers. The media have mentioned these ones because they are headline grabbers. However it is this one that is really going to impact the day to day running of the school...parenst don't realise what is in front of them:
1. Kids (especially in primary schools) sent home because the school can't afford to cover them.
2. A school environment where everybody si stuck inside the classroom and any extra curricular education is gone by the wayside.
3. Our school for example may have to cancel mock orals, so its not just sports suffering.
So there you have it, pretty grim!

[kerpal]

Little or no effect will be made on any rugby playing schools with a strong past pupil network and with supporting parents. Most of the bigger names in schools rugby are run with the contributions from parents and PPU's.
Also, schools with affiliated rugby clubs often receive money from the clubs who are of the view that the better the players become in school this will be of benefit to the club in the future.

Schools rugby will continue to grow and become even more competitive as coaching standards and playing standards increase, and no budget will ever effect this.

[Buenavista]

I think that is a bit of a blinkered and possibly elitist view. Yes a few schools may be run like that, but not that many. So a few schools may keep it going but it won't really be for the benefit of rugby. Will playing numbers increase or stay the same..no. Will smaller schools be able to develop rugby..no. And I don't think you are looking at the big picture in terms of overall rugby development. Also these schools will now have to use their money to maintain curricular standards and activities first, no matter how many rich sugar daddies there are.

[Grumpy Old Man]

I think that is a bit of a blinkered and possibly elitist view. Yes a few schools may be run like that, but not that many. So a few schools may keep it going but it won't really be for the benefit of rugby. Will playing numbers increase or stay the same..no. Will smaller schools be able to develop rugby..no. And I don't think you are looking at the big picture in terms of overall rugby development. Also these schools will now have to use their money to maintain curricular standards and activities first, no matter how many rich sugar daddies there are.

As a teacher, shouldn't you be in school? Or are you on uncertified sick leave?

[Buenavista]

Lunch break. but thanks for noticing!

[lebowski]

The cup competitions will not end over these cutbacks. However, they will be seriously curtailed. Any school without a halfday on Wednesdays will no longer be able to play as schools will not have the money to cover the three classes needed per teacher to play the match (about €150 per match). No school will be able to afford this. This in reality will only affect Section A Schools, so the expansion of rugby out of south Dublin will grind to a halt from next season.

There are also wories for the two remaining non-fee paying premier schoos - Templeogue and Pres Bray. How will these be able to finance away games to Roscrea, Kilkenny and Newbridge, when teachers need to get out of class early for these. I would imagine these games will have to be played on a Saturday or else the Provincial Schools will end up with no fixtures at all.

I as a teacher and an UNPAID JCT coach for one of the bigger schools have already been told that none of my classes will be covered from January 7th for any rugby match. I have no intention of playing Saturday games as I give enough of my own time free gratis during the week and feel I deserve some down time. If the answer is to play on Saturdays then there will be no teacher involvement, as most of us still play, so therefore no rugby in our school. These budget cutbacks look like they will destroy rugby for all but a few number of schools.