STEVE'S BLOG - The Musings Of A Grumpy Old Prop.
Reproduced with the permission of the Cornish Pirates May 7th 2009

Steve's Blog will be a feature of the new Pirates website (coming soon), but for now everyone will have chance to read & join in here

Some people will inevitably disagree with me - indeed I hope they do - but if, by the time the next blog appears, people visiting this site have had the opportunity of reflecting upon and debating the points raised then I will feel I have done my job. So here goes

Fourteen years of professionalism and regulation - are we any better for it?

After a century of furiously defending the amateur ethos of the game the powers-that-be on the IRB at the time suddenly announced in 1995 that the game was to be an open one. For many of us that seems like only yesterday but for thousands - if not millions - of today's players and indeed younger spectators they have never known anything else.

Although the announcement itself was sudden it had been coming for a number of years but nevertheless caught many by surprise. Before then top players all had full time jobs and one of the interesting things about thumbing through an England programme was reading that Richard Hill was a schoolmaster and that Gareth Chilcott was a 'security consultant' - think we all know what that was.

There was also a fair bit of snobbery about the sport and much was made in the programme of where somebody went to school. When the then England captain, John Spencer, was itemized as being from Sedbergh and Queens College, Cambridge, our own Stack Stevens retaliated by stating he went to Leedstown 'High School'. When challenged on just what was 'High' about it he replied that it 'was on the top of a bleddy hill wasn't it!'

All that old nonsense has been swept away and most would agree that this was not before time. But other - to my mind precious - things have also gone out in the wash. There is absolutely no denying that at the very top level players are exponentially fitter, better coached and with skill levels which amateurs could only dream about. Similarly facilities, media coverage and refereeing are light years ahead of where we were before.

Competitive leagues have brought increased focus to each match and there is now a successful meritocracy allowing clubs like the Pirates and Mounts Bay to climb up to play a much higher standard than would ever have been possible before. Indeed this has been so successful that the 'haves' repeatedly try to shut out the challenges of the 'have nots' from below by fair means or foul. In the GPL this means shallow ruses like 'ring fencing and 'entry criteria' both of which should be seen for what they are - crude attempts at cartels. Similarly at international level those brave souls from Argentina have been treated just as shamefully by the IRB as the Division One clubs have by the RFU. The reasons? Fear, short-termism and money.

For hundreds of clubs and thousands of amateur players the case seems far less compelling. When I was a player - and indeed until quite recently - a man joined a club and, unless he was away at college or left the area altogether, going to another club was almost unthinkable. If a player was dropped from the Chiefs (Pirates' name for the First XV), he played cheerfully for the second team or indeed the third team. The idea of decamping off to Redruth or Hayle in a huff never crossed most people's minds. You just stuck with your mates and tried to win your place back.

The 'easy come-easy go' approach also meant that players could come into a side to make up the numbers without worrying about registrations, having points docked and all those other mournful things which are part and parcel of even quite junior matches today. The result is sadly that less people get an opportunity to play and - by extension - less rugby is actually played.

I recall once being sat on the wall overlooking Mousehole harbour one September afternoon in the late 1960's eating a very large bag of chips. Some visiting rugby players obviously recognized my prematurely gleaming head and knew I was a local prop forward. They came over and asked me to play that evening as they had suffered a few injuries and couldn't raise a side.

When I asked who they were they said they were the 'Public School Wanderers' and were due to play against Penryn in about four hours time. They airily brushed aside my observation that Humphry Davy wasn't quite a 'Public School' with the comment "Oh gosh we get all sorts these days" which did not cheer me up very much…. particularly as they then polished off the rest of my chips.

Anyway, I duly played in a thoroughly enjoyable match and was thanked by both committees for stepping in at the last moment so that the game could take place on a lovely September evening. Nowadays everyone would be so tied up with red tape that it could never happen.

Is this progress ?

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