I am not one of those old boys that wears his school brand 20 years after leaving school but I love my school and support it unashamedly. But one thing I do not agree with is the pressure that schools, players, parent and public put on 1st team players at school level.

A friend of mine, BigBev, alerted me to a story on rugby365.co.za that has surfaced. Certain Private school's have all banded together and decided to take their schools out of the rugby ranking systems available online. Not only are these schools pulling out of the rugby rankings, but are also pulling out of any ranking system at all.

The schools involved have noted that they feel that the ranking systems create unhealthy competition between school which they say has an indirect effect on "marketing, scholarships and post-matric issues, as well as relationships between schools, parents and old boys."

I think that this is a great move by these schools, however rugby365.co.za does have some interesting rebuttles:

How are schools going to stop people from ranking their rugby if the results of fixtures are made public? What is to stop me for example, from starting my own ranking site and keeping it up to date with the published results from the weekend?

They also noted that its a bit tought to blame the ranking sites and systems for bad blood between schools.

I think it's an interesting argument.