Lifestyle -- 12 days ago
Words: Patrick
Oh dear. It’s official; Britain has gone full-bore health and safety crazy. Over time we’ve got used to the fact that anyone within three miles of a building site has to don a hard-hat and high-vis, and that a certificate is required if you need to go any higher than three rungs on a stepladder, but with news yesterday calling for the banning of tackling in U18s rugby, it seems that we’ve really lost the plot. Churchill will be turning in his grave.
‘Science’, if this pointless study can be called such, really is the blight of the modern day – money is poured down the drain in an effort to find results to queries no one had. Here’s some staunch research for you: look at how youngsters learn the value of teamwork on the rugby field; the value of sportsmanship; the value of healthy competition. They don’t walk off the pitch screaming that they’ve been forced against their will to wrestle a boy from an opposing school – quite the contrary, in fact.
Need I remind you that we invented the sport, in an age where health and safety wasn’t such a poisonous red tape presence? I can’t help but feel that somewhere, in a pristine laboratory where nothing but silence is tolerated, enforced by the threat of execution, a group of irked men and women in white coats gather around a blank board and decide which facet of the country they are going to ruin next. They had their way with fox hunting, moved swiftly onto smoking indoors, ordered kids to wear goggles while playing conkers, then told us on numerous occasions that if we ate bacon or drank beer we would die early, and now they’ve decided that children should be smothered head to toe in bubble-wrap before stepping outside.
Honestly, these dullards would have a heart attack in Greece. When on a recent assignment south of Athens, I saw an old man who had backed his pick up to a telephone pylon on the main road, erected a ladder in the back and was making his merry way up to adjust some wires, wobbling like a flag in the wind as he went. No high-vis, no road diversion, no helmet, no folder of tedious regulations under his arm – just a man doing a job that needed doing.
Sure, when I look back on my rugby playing days at school, there was blood, broken bones and concussions – it’s a contact sport, not croquet – but the same happened in hockey, cricket, football, running to lunch, running from lunch, food fighting at lunch. Shall we just ban it all then? If we let the white coats do away with tackling, what will they go for next when they meet around the coffee machine and share horrifying tales about children who have hurt their shins while climbing trees? They’ll probably want to cut down all the trees.
What is infuriating is that their plan of action is just to ban. Why not address the issue and look at ways of making it safer, rather than just consign to the archives? On another note, what would this spell for the future of English rugby? Eddie Jones will struggle to find talent in Generation Y if they’ve missed defence training.
I laugh of the thought of what the southern hemisphere nations make of this garbage. Imagine the likes of New Zealand, South Africa and Tonga decreeing no tackling in schools – there would be public uproar, a full-scale riot, led by the likes of Habana and Sonny Bill-Williams. England may have invented the sport, but these are the guys who live and breathe it. They’d sooner ban religion.
Here’s a thought: don’t want your kids to get hurt playing rugby? Buy them a squash racket instead, send them to Pony Club, or damage them mentally rather than physically and enrol them in the chess club. Or, better still, listen to the ‘doctors’ and ‘scientists’: ban your children from exercise altogether; let them grow fat and idle watching tripe such as Gogglebox; and never, ever, on any circumstance, allow them to learn the value of being in a team, of dedication and of sportsmanship.
Honestly, what a bunch of numpties.
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