School Paneling of Under Age Club Players

The Lost Sheep

fuzzy wrote: »

I suppose the key point here is the schools should be bound to seek consent from players before preventing them from playing for their club. The people in charge of the sport appear to be unconcerned about unfairness when it comes to promoting the school rugby agenda. This is fairly contemptible.

The people in charge of the sport are completely concerned with this issue. Its been discussed/argued over for decades at this stage and it isnt simply about promoting school rugby agenda.

mun1

One cork school have depanelled 5 players last week after parents threatened legal action if they weren’t panelled. The branch agreed as long as 5 other players weren’t added afterwards.

What my club in limerick have done in previous year is:
Parents write to school before paneling stating that they did not wish their child to be panelled . Some have got a solicitors letter as well.
If paneling happens then get another letter in quoting your wishes from the first letter.
Send this to munster branch. There is now precedence this season with this non cork city school depanelling players.

If your child is getting depressed of down about it then report it to the Spirit officer, munster rugby, Emily O’Leary (contact details on munster rugby.ie)who will look into the case with the child’s welfare as the main priority.

The school will expect you to eventually go away and they can intimidate your child to play schools rugby.

My own case a good few years ago was that i was struggling with the academic side of school pre leaving cert and my father asked that i be removed form the panel before Xmas to concentrate on my studies.
The schools officially removed me from the panel, but each and every day i was was called out of a class by the head coach to ask me in front of everyone why I wouldn’t play for the school.
I eventually agreed to play and after we got to the final (and got hammered:)), i was offered the chance to repeat the leaving cert next year . did i mention i was underage for senior choose the following year ?
I left the school with an average leaving cert and got on with life.
The above is what we would now call child abuse and abuse of power, and there are many more worse cases over the years.

It doesn’t help that the chairman of munster youths (not elected)has just stepped down as the schools representative.
And what happens this September ?all club loans previously approved by the branch have been turned down by the committee leaving about 100 players in the province, mostly cork and limerick without rugby.
Meanwhile there is only one limerick club out of 8 entered into the u16 munster league this season (this club lost 13 players to schools so is down to 17 in squad) while st munchins can field 3 teams for friendlies at u16 two weeks ago.

When the CEO of the IRFU describes the munster clubs as “difficult” in his keynote speech last week , then you know things are stacked against you.

The limerick clubs have made it a priority issue for the branch as its getting worse year on year , but munster rugby and the IRFU want munster to follow Leinster example and concentrate the talent at schools.

fuzzy

Thanks for that Mun1.

Can you clarify: the school had 5 players depanelled after a legal threat from the parents if they weren't panelled. Do you mean, if they were panelled?

mun1

No fuzzy, they were panelled in September and then parents and club forced school to depanel them

Quin_Dub

mun1 wrote: »

The limerick clubs have made it a priority issue for the branch as its getting worse year on year , but munster rugby and the IRFU want munster to follow Leinster example and concentrate the talent at schools.

That's fine and dandy , but the sheer volume of numbers in Leinster mean that works , bt not in Munster.

There are a dozen or so top end schools in Leinster ( and probably at least 100 schools not playing rugby) , mostly in and around Dublin and with 1M+ population there are plenty of players to go around for the clubs to be able to field and do perfectly fine.

However uniquely to Limerick, you have 6 Schools and about 10 clubs and a total population of maybe 75k. As I said earlier there are only 2 schools in Limerick that would not be paneling players.

So clubs that have invested maybe 5 or 6 years into players from U8/U9 to U15 suddenly lose all these players for 3 or 4 years.

It's not sustainable..

mun1

And you can check munster rugby website and see they are now the only school with a junior cup panel of 23

fuzzy

There is 1 school with a panel of 23 on the junior squad. But that school had only 23 at the start of the season.

mun1

Sent you a PM fuzzy. Tough situation to be in and not what rugby should be about

Tim Robbins

fuzzy wrote: »

There is 1 school with a panel of 23 on the junior squad. But that school had only 23 at the start of the season.

Get your son to play Soccer and GAA for local clubs - as the school can't stop him doing that :-)

Zzippy

We don't normally allow discussion of schools rugby, but this is a specific issue that I think is ok to discuss. Please do not name any schools, clubs, players or coaches involved, as this will lead to the thread being closed. Discussion of the topic in general only please.

That's a panelling...

D14Rugby

Quin_Dub wrote: »

I did the same myself in Leinster back in the day , but the rules have changed now..

In Leinster , if you are in a Rugby school you cannot play competitive Club rugby , but that works out ok in Leinster as the numbers are there to allow both to compete well.

This issue is really unique to Limerick due to the concentration of rugby schools in Limerick city - all but two of the secondary schools are Rugby schools so the impact is massive to the city clubs

Don't think that's strictly true in Leinster, there's certainly a lot of players that play for clubs in TY and after the schools season ends anyway.

This whole situation seems weird. You say your son was a first team player for both school and club so is it a case of him wanting to play just club this year instead of school from the start or did something happen to make him not want to play for the school?