THIS HOUSE BELIEVES THAT RUGBY SHOULD BE BANNED AS A SCHOOL SPORT

INTRODUCTION	Hello, madam chair, opposition, judges and the rest of Year Nine. I am Jamie and this is my colleague, Charles. We are representing Radcliffe and proposing the motion, This house believes rugby should be banned as a school sport.
SIGNPOSTING	I will discuss three main issues: the first, it encourages violence, second, dangerous sports should not be compulsory and third, it is likely to cause illness. Then, Charles will then focus on the danger and injury possibilities within rugby, splitting this into three sections: the ineffectiveness of body armour, the likelihood of concussion and its repercussions and the size- and gender-inequality of rugby. But first, I will define the motion. This house, we define as the UK. Rugby, we define as all derivatives, both contact and non-contact of the game of Rugby.
POINT 1	My first point, it encourages violence.
	This might seem like a silly argument, but it is true. Rugby is basically a civilised way of attempting to beat fifteen other human beings into a pulp. We as a nation are encouraging our children to play this as part of their education. Our opponents will probably say that we should not molly-coddle our children so much, but really. Is preventing our children from becoming bloodthirsty, brutal bigots really that awful? Then, they might say that by banning rugby as it is dangerous will lead to us banning say, swimming as you might drown when you swim. The difference is, the aim of rugby, or at least as far as I can gather from standing on the side-lines watching those more muscularly fortunate than myself play it is to hurt yourself, or at least not to actively avoid it. However, the aim of swimming isn’t to drown. This makes that idea useless and unnecessary. This has so far shown that rugby contains violence, something everybody knows. However, my point is that rugby causes violence. I do not mean this in the way that say, Karate causes violence, as the violence within Karate is contained. In rugby, however, there are no rules stating that the things you do while playing it cannot be done outside, such as there is for karate. This means that, for those who play rugby as often as, say thrice a week, as many of you here in this room do, it causes the brain to re-engineer itself to think that as you shoved someone onto the ground on the pitch yesterday, you can do it again off the pitch today. This means that by playing rugby, people’s brains can be re-engineered to be bullies. This, I am sure, does not apply to everyone, but does apply to enough people to make it a valid argument.
POINT 2	My second point, dangerous sports should not be compulsory.
”	We in this school are lucky as we have the opportunity to exercise and fill our games sessions doing things other than rugby, but not everyone is. I for one do not think that we should allow people to be forced to play a sport where if a whole school year played it for one hour, four people would injure themselves enough to have to sit out. If you are someone who wishes to pursue the sport for a career, there would be out-of-school opportunities. To rebut this, our opponents might say that our nation’s children must exercise. Well, I admit that rugby is one way of getting exercise, but I for one can think of many other ways that do not involve getting you head mashed in. Banning rugby would mean that schools would have to find other sports to play. Some might take the easy option, and just go straight to football, but others may use it as an opportunity to revise their sports program and introduce a different sport – fives or maybe even one very few people have ever heard of – Bossaball for example. This increase sporting diversity in our country, and we may even become the home nation of the next fives champion, so bringing extra money into our economy.
POINT 3	My third point, the danger of illness.
”	This again may seem like a pointless and inconsequential idea, but I disagree. Rugby is a winter sport in it not? It is usually played during the winter months. It also it not called off even if there is rain or even a “little light hail”. This makes me think that if you are running around in just a short-sleeved t-shirt and shorts, that this weather is not conducive to good health. Though it does not actually cause colds, cold weather does have a suppressive effect on your immune system. Cold weather and respiratory disease, including flu, go hand in hand, according to the Harvard medical school. It can also inflame asthma and cause migraines. Is it worth risking these illnesses and thus decreasing your time in school, that in turn lowering your future possibilities just to throw a ball around and then have your face mashed into the mud? I think not.
SIGNPOSTING	Now, to remind you, I have discussed that rugby can cause violence, it is often compulsory, and it can cause illness.
CONCLUSION	In conclusion, I believe that rugby should be banned as a school sport for as one man once said, Rugby is a war without frills. Do you really think we should allow this violent ‘sport’ in our schools? I don’t, and I think that you don’t either, really. Thank you, and please vote for us.

Good afternoon, Madame Chairman, Timekeeper, Opposition and Audience. Following on from what my partner Jamie spoke about why rugby should be banned from schools, I will be primarily focusing on the dangers of rugby and the impact it has on many people’s lives. But before I get into that, I would like act against some of the points made by the opposition.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, onto my first point. Many of you will be thinking that rugby is safe because you can wear padding and scrum caps. This is not correct. Padding only makes the hit even harder and scrum caps can’t completely protect you from life-threatening head injuries. Even full-on helmets that are worn in cricket, horse-riding and American Football can’t fully protect you from concussions and there is no way that helmets can be introduced into rugby.

Rugby is a long game, and there aren’t many seconds that go by without a tackle, ruck, maul, scrum or lineout. The 5 phases just mentioned are all concussion hazards. Before I elaborate upon concussions, I would like to establish what a concussion really is. A sports concussion (the ones suffered in rugby) is where a blow or bang to the head results in the brain rubbing against the side of the skull causing memory problems, confusion, drowsiness, double or blurred vision, headaches and nausea. This can all be caused by the continuous hits involved in rugby. A study done by the BBC showed that 13% of the 585 people surveyed suffered a concussion during the 2013/14 season. 23 people had to retire from rugby because of multiple concussions, probably since they returned to soon instead of waiting the recommended month or they could play on after suffering a minor concussion. This is all in one season, it is almost a guarantee throughout a 10-year period of rugby playing that a concussion will be suffered. As I leave the topic of concussion I ask you, do the rules of rugby encourage violence and injury? Compared to football, which is adjudged the next most dangerous sport by the headcase, I think they do.

As Jamie has already mentioned about how rugby is not the most gender or size equal sport, I will talk about the impacts of size and the desire to play rugby. Young boys who carry on playing rugby into their teens will realise that if they are small, they may not be able to keep up with bigger players and so feel like they must hit the gym regularly. If they do this at a young age, it has damaging effects on their health in adulthood and in later life. Also, if any player of any age plays rugby for school 3 times a week and also for their club once or twice a week and for the particularly excelling players, DPP once a week, this is far too much of a physically demanding sport to play if your body cannot cope, which many players think that it can when it can’t.

I would also like you to think what the government would say if someone came up with a new idea to have scrums (pretend that this didn’t already exist), the description of their idea would be something along the lines of ‘we are going to push as hard as we can against each others heads until someone caves in and gets squashed by 200lbs of muscle and then we’ll get the ball as quickly as we can to the biggest guy at the back, and he can charge against their smallest guy’. I do not think the house of lords would be buying into that. Scrums have been known to cause alzheimers and dementia later on in life. In some ways, these diseases are even greater than concussion as the effects are not present until you are 60 or 70, when it is far, far too late.

In conclusion, I do not believe that World Rugby are doing all they can to prevent injuries and that is why 70 doctors or medical chiefs have called for rugby to be banned in schools. World Rugby are not being proactive enough, so why risk someone’s life when they are other alternatives such as football, basketball or hockey. I will leave you to decide. Thank you very much.