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Death inevitable' in rugby arms race, warns headmaster
- By Matthew Fynes-Clinton
- From: The Courier-Mail
- April 12, 2010 1:35AM
One headmaster believes his boys will get seriously going up against unfairly matched teams / The Courier-Mail Source: The Courier-Mail
- Headmaster to ban rugby union
- Schools unfairly bulking up sides
- Fears death will occur on pitch
THE headmaster of a top private school is set to ban boys from playing rugby union amid fears they could die in a sporting arms race.
Peter Chapman, the principal of St Joseph's College, Gregory Terrace, in Brisbane, said serious injury could result from the excessive size and strength of some schoolboy teams with a win-at-all-costs agenda.
One of his colleagues made an even more dire prediction.
"With this process proceeding the way it is now, death is unavoidable. You will have a death on the paddock," said Arthur Palmer, a vice-chairman of Queensland's Great Public Schools association.
His warning came as The Courier-Mail discovered that some of the country's top private schools were recruiting rugby talent from overseas on "sports scholarships" involving millions of dollars in waived or drastically-reduced school fees.
Many of the targeted players have been put on heavy weightlifting programs since their mid-teens.
Grossly unmatched
The scholarship deals are bankrolled by wealthy old boys, although funds are sometimes also sourced from school revenue.
"The process at the moment is unchecked," said Mr Chapman, who is chairman of GPS, an association of nine private schools in Queensland.
"There's no clear regulations or guidelines around what constitutes a fair and safe competition."
Mr Chapman said he had warned his fellow GPS heads that he would no longer tolerate his school's rugby teams contesting "grossly unmatched" fixtures.
He said he would consider withdrawing his sides from games on a case-by-case basis.
"If we were going to come up against a team that is far superior in size and where I think kids might be injured, I'd have to step in and say, `Look, I just don't think it's appropriate that we play on (this) particular occasion'," he said.
Mr Chapman said Terrace, which finished fifth in last year's First XV premiership, refused to offer sports scholarships or bursaries - which are outlawed among Sydney's leading private schools.
He said long-term students who had attended his school in "good faith" did not deserve to be displaced from sporting teams in the chase for trophies and marketing kudos.
"If you're selective, maybe you'll get bigger kids," he said.
"But I work with the cohort I've got. I'm not selecting kids in the senior school to come in and enhance the result in a sporting competition."
http://www.news.com.au/national/deat...-1225852508437