I am appalled that there is still so much ignorance out there.
I wish someone would bang the heads of ERFSU (Schools Union) together and make them ALL comply / co-operate with full RFU instructions. Many do of course and have close CSC & RDO links in their County.
It is crazy that ESRFU claims seniority (as founded before RFU in Victorian times) and at times seems to do just does what it wants to. Some Prep Schools (private) are the worst offenders in my experience at the pre-contact pre U13 age groups.
At the older U16 and U18 1st XV levels most Public Schools I have reffed (Wellington, Millfield, Hampton, Dulwich, St Pauls, St Benedicts, and Hampshire's KES, PGS and Chuchers) have excellent coaches and master-in-charge with Game and LoG knowledge many clubs would do well to catch up with. Where state schools / 6th form colleges have linked with local clubs and use Community Coaches or other volunteers, LoG / coaching knowledge is pretty good too.
But there are still too many 'coaches' running school sides who have no formal guidance - I am not criticising the fact they are volunteers, but that the system seems to not provide the info they need. Mention an RFU County RDO or local CSC to them and they look blankly at you.
My daughter (ex Women's Premiership and Welsh Women's B cap) coaches her School's XV (at an U16 comprehensive) alongside another teacher who is in local club's 1st X (level 7 club). This is the school's second season of playing rugby and although they have a core of juniors from the local club, half the team had never played at all before last year. In preparation for their first ever Daily Mail Cup match at U15 yesterday she has spent ages on visits to us back home in the last month going through ELVs and new directives re tackle / ruck sealing, etc with me.
She called last night to say they had won (20 point spread !) but she was really cross. The referee was not a Society one (teacher from another school close to opponents), he had little if any knowledge of ELVs (insisted they must have a line-out receiver & equal or below 'numbers', did C - TP - E for engagement, and knew nothing about 5m offside at scrums). Her FR broke two of oppos props quite quickly (she has worked hard on her guys' techniques) and so ref went uncontested scrums but then didn't allow #8 pick up.
Plus oppo school master was very critical of her side's aggressive scrummaging, dynamic rucking (they go in linked as bound pairs and bind on to those already there she tells me) and flankers making a nuisance of themselves (ref didn't penalise just hand binding at scrums). To top it all afterwards he questioned how a female teacher might know more about rugby than him (by inference not directly) when discussing the ELVs that hadn't been applied - he didn't know about line out ones either !
