Rugby Union & USA?????

[russ13]

That is an interesting article that Shimmy produced about union in California. This extract caught my eye:

The quality of athletes playing rugby in Northern California and on the West Coast went into decline when Congress passed Title Nine. This forced the colleges and universities to open up sports programs to women on an equal basis with the men or lose federal funds. It also meant that many colleges and universities, in order to comply with Title Nine, began to eliminate minor men’s sports programs, which had varsity status. The loss of varsity status for men’s rugby on many of the campuses meant the loss of scholarship football players who easily adapted to the physical challenges of rugby. Money for rugby programs was cut off and so were all the other things scholarship footballers received such as medical care, trainers, food tables, etc. Ironically, at that time, we had many outstanding athletes, via the football programs, playing rugby, but coaching and refereeing standards were far behind the player’s abilities.

The implications for other sports & particularly RU (in Australia). A lot of taxpayers money is hived off to sporting bodies. RU in this country is a major recipent of this largess. For instance taxpayers money is given to private schools (Grammer shools in Queensland receive about $4100 per pupil). As a part of a students education sport is played including football.
All football codes are played in government & private schools except RL in private schools (this is not exactly true but bear with me.)

The kids want to play RL & the parents want them to play RL. The private schools says you have to play RU. This is OK in an era when the schools did not receive taxpayer's money. But RL supporters are taxpayers & their money is being used (in this case) to prop up RU, a rival professional code. Why are the private schools allowed to favour one professional sport over another.

There is a precident in this country for this discrimination requiring legislative action. Remember a while ago the gays were excluded from teaching in church schools schools because of their lifestyle being contrary to the churches teaching. Gays are taxpayers & as church schools were receiving taxpayer funds the gays being denied employment there were discriminated against they argued.

The gays seem to have more political clought than the NRL in this country.

Imagine if about half of those playing RU at private shools played at least a few games of RL what it would do for the code. It would at least break down that middle class bias against RL.