I dip into this thread every now and then, and what strikes me is the lack of coherent thinking behind most of the posts. Mostly what we see is the wholesale bashing of two schools for, it would seem, failing to abdide by the AAGPS prohibition on sporting scholarships.
It seems to me that this is a rather hollow argument. I see no signs of any will on the part of GPS headmasters to apply to Rugby a version of the legendary basketball blackban. It strikes me (and I may be wrong) that basketball was chosen to make the point because it's a sport that isn't hugely popular within the GPS (it's not as though it's the Head of the River). Given that the GPS Schools lack the will or power to enforce their own ban, debating whether school A or B has broken it does seem rather pointless.
The assumption underlying most posts is that attracting athletes on scholarship is in itself a bad thing. That may be right, but it isn't a self-evident proposition. Boy X from Dubbo suddenly gets the chance to complete his education at a school with great facilities and good opportunities in the classroom, if he cares about that, and on the sporting field. His team-mates get the benefit of playing alongside a high-quality player, and the competition benefits from that too. Now, three arguments seem to be run against this. The first is that the boy who played in the As for four years now finds himself playing in the Seconds rather than the Firsts. Well, that can happen, but that's life. If the new guy is better, he plays. When I was in Year 12 I suddenly found myself competing for a spot with two guys who turned up at the school to complete their last year of schooling (not, I should add, on scholarships of any kind, and one turned out to be quite ordinary, even though he had tattoos). It never occurred to me to say, "it's not fair, it's my turn, I should play because I'm waiting in line." In sport, you need to earn your spot by being better than the next guy. School may not be a bad time to learn that lesson.
The second argument is that it is somehow more virtuous to develop your own players. I think there's something in this, but only up to a point. If your school's own resources aren't good enough to compete, where's the virtue in being flogged year after year? In the days before "recruiting" became common, it was hardly a level playing field - St Joseph's won 16 premierships in 20 years from 1976 to 1995 (and one of the years in which it lost was to the notorious Scots team of 1993). A school like Newington draws its pupils from (amongst others) areas of Sydney where soccer is historically strong - and in the 48 years from 1962 to 2009, it won exactly one 1st XV premiership. Where's the virtue in losing repeatedly?
The third argument is that it's unfair to have a two-speed competition in which some schools recruit externally and others don't. And that has obvious merit. The round one results suggested that this has happened already, at least at 1st XV level. The answer to that, I'm afraid, lies in a radical revamp of the GPS competition. And when you look east in the morning and see a flock of pigs flying past the rising sun, that will happen.
