Sideline,
Think praying may not help!
We all know schools are businesses these days, and big ones.
So if a school signs up to play with the big boys then it must make itself competitive, eg promote rugby more in-house etc,
Honey B, HA good come back.
Lets just see what happens, it is always easier to be negative and provide no plans for improvement.
I just hope it all works really well, and is expanded into a bigger comp in 2017!
''We all know'' has nothing to do with it. It is the school administrators who will make the decisions about maintaining or changing their philosophy regarding sport. The decision to maintain a no-scholarship policy or to introduce it or any other changes wont be made by wishful thinkers within any given school's community.
''Must make itself competitive'' ? you assume a lot.
Will Waverley, for example change their policies and priorities because some rugby supporters said they ''must'?
In the good old days rugby was THE winter sport, but not now.
A new Headmaster will be appointed soon and who knows what his priorities will be. Hopefully he's an old rugby player and old boy with a busted up nose and a down to earth attitude, but he may be a big AFL or soccer fan; or he may have excelled on the debating team when he was at school and will therefore focus on academic pursuits as a priority.
And in this day and age of political correctness and the tolerant society, a lot of which is crap, the table tennis and lawn bowls programmes may demand equal billing with rugby. And they might be a chance of getting it.
This year at Waverley, a goodwill trip to Timor was scheduled commencing on the day before the last round of the rugby season, therefore robbing quite a few players of the chance to play the last game. The 2nd XV team was weakened considerably and narrowly lost that game and ended up coming 2nd in the comp. Had they won Waverley would have been outright or equal CAS Premiership winners in the 1sts, 2nds, 3rds and 4th XVs.
So they couldn't leave a few days later ? Whoever was responsible for that schedule should have been tarred and feathered and put on the next train out of Bondi Junction. Not exactly a mortal sin but close.
So nothing would surprise me .....
Just because this rugby competition format has changed doesn't necessarily mean schools will fall over themselves trying to keep up. If this format continues as predicted into the future, then some schools may be resigned to being relegated to Division 2 if that will be the format with relegation and promotion. Or Division 2 might be called something else so as not to offend.
Who knows, the geniuses who hatched this plan may even bring back a 2 round competition and get rid of all the ''trial'' matches which will attract bragging rights and little else, except to give individuals a chance to impress Rep selectors.
Yes, we'll see what happens. Being realistic is not the same as being negative. i just don't happen to be convinced by your sales pitch and I haven't got the blinkers on.
