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Rugby

"If you think 'I want to be Jonny Sexton someday', it's highly likely your parents will need big bank accounts"

Last night, former Ireland second row Trevor Hogan touched on the need to spread the game of rugb...



"If you think 'I want...
Rugby

"If you think 'I want to be Jonny Sexton someday', it's highly likely your parents will need big bank accounts"

Last night, former Ireland second row Trevor Hogan touched on the need to spread the game of rugby beyond the fee-paying rugby schools to all strata when it comes to growing the pool of available players at provincial and international level.

The issue was also the subject of a piece by sports journalist Ewan MacKenna in The Times and tonight both joined us on Off The Ball to debate participation levels and the spread of the game.

Ewan has looked at the numbers of players coming through the fee-paying school system, pointing out that 18 of the 22 in Leinster's academy went to fee-paying schools.

Listen to the full debate via the podcast player:

"If you think 'I want to be Jonny Sexton someday', it's highly likely your parents will need big bank accounts"

00:00:00 / 00:00:00

"Certainly a majority. There are cases - the likes of Sean O'Brien - who came up through a different system. But the figures show that massively, if you take the make-up of be it the Ireland squad, the Leinster squad and even down to the academies that an overwhelming majority of the players went to private institutions that are beyond the means of most people and it's hurting rugby hugely," he said, also discussing the historic reasons why rugby did go through the rugby school model at first.

Contrasting the situation with other sports like hurling, he added: "With rugby, if you sit down and think 'I want to be Jonny Sexton someday', it's highly likely that your parents will have to have big bank accounts".

Trevor did feel that the fact that 45 per cent of the southern-educated Rugby World Cup squad did not come through the fee-paying system can be viewed as a positive, saying that it shows "that the gap is closing".

But he does feel that rugby in Ireland is "still a fairly elite" sport, speaking of the "luck" needed for those outside the main pathway to make their way to the top.

"It needs more investment and it needs more coaching for these clubs to try and bring them up earlier so there's not that big division with the schools," he said.

"For me, I think the whole Leinster Senior Cup thing is like this whole big massive warp like a wormhole that sucks everything into it. It just chews it up and spits it all out afterwards, because that Senior Cup, it just distorts everything. All the focus goes onto this thing and there's no real concern about long-term development of those players - like the guys who are the second team in the school. I'd love for the same amount of attention to go onto the clubs' senior cup."  

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