Young Players Quitting Rugby

LeeroyJones

Why is it that after U-20 level rugby, you have to play senior rugby? There are too many players leaving the game because they feel they can't cut it at senior level just yet. Surely the IRFU have seen this exodus and must therefore set up U-21 and U-23 leagues.

Any thoughts on this, surely its a big issue in rugby in Ireland

siochain

Hi LeeroyJones,

only the best of the 20's go straight to the senior team. In our club usually the 20's season is over when the end of season J3 & J4 cups are on and most of them would play. This gives them a chance to ease into the adult teams.

The 20's that leave would be generally for work\college reasons or the get an offer from a bigger club

Anyway at 20 you want to be treated like a man, why not on the rugby pitch ??

Cheers

Leon11

Are you serious? At 20 your old enough to be playing with senior level. If your not good enough you can play J3/J4 for senior clubs or play 2nds/3rds for Junior clubs.

A lot of senior clubs in Dublin have u-23 development/academy sides already that play in the J1/J2 league

LeeroyJones

of course im serious, you only need to look at the statistics to see that ther is a big drop in numbers after 20's. sure the top players go into senior 1st's but there doesnt seem to be encouragement for fringe players to continue. Many players are very successful at schools level, but only few of them carry on rugby after u-20's

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

LFC5Times

The biggest problem in Irish rugby is the drop off of the talented schools players every year who never go on to play rugby a year or two after school.

Look back at the Irish Schools/Irish U.19 teams over the years and a fair amount of them players are not playing at all (might have played U.20 for a couple of years) or just playing socially down the Junior Levels.

This has all to do with the seriousness of the schools game in Ireland where players train /play 6 times a week and are exhausted.
This starts at Junior Cup level and goes all the way up to Senior Level for the better players.

Then the cream of the crop from the Irish Schools teams often make it into these pre-Academys with the provinces where they have to train 2/3 days a week for nothing in the hope that the following year they will be accepted into the full Academy where they will get paid to train.
While in these pre-Academys they have to lick the coaches arses, do their training with the pre-Academy,train with their club 2/3 nights a week,play a match for their club at weekends and go to college or hold down a job.

I know some of you may say thats the sacrifice young players have to make if they are to make it - but thats complete and utter bull.
Some of these players could have played 2 years Junior Cup and 3 years Senior Cup so 5 years of training 6 days a week from the age of 13/14 to 18.

The fact that Brian O'Driscoll in a big interview in the Irish Times a few months back mentioned the Academy guys having to be up at 6.00am on Xmas day or Xmas eve running up Killiney or Howth Hill. O'Driscoll commented that this was too much for young Academy players to be doing and was very tough and he then says that most of them wont even make it and something needs to be done.

In a good few cases you will see that some of the present International and Provinical players where only subs or didnt make the schoolboy/U.19 sqauds because they where behind better players and these better players have now given up the game,due to exhaustion of rugby.

Ausdubliner

This same issue occurs in most countries I believe. In Australia, we have the same issue and as mentioned before it has a lot to do with burnout. Also, players at that age can lose interest in playing because of other interests/commitments.

I agree though that players can train to much...burnout is a real issue in professional rugby.