Every few months this sort of thing pops up for junior league and junior union in Australia. It's a buzz right now in rugby union as a young fella died over the weekend. They mentioned that the idea of juniors playing according to weight divisions rather than age groups has been played/trialled in NZ successfully over the last few years. Wondering if anyone could elaborate on that or had any experience with how exactly they worked it and up to what ages they applied the restrictions. Strikes me as pretty stupid and unworkable in reality.
They apply the restrictions in NZ atleast up until you go to high school and it is fucking stupid http://www.allteams.co.nz/upload/usermedia/files/31/2012 weights chart.pdf Both my brothers had to play up 1 grade because they too big to play with their friends evidently their impact was very minimal and they didn't get as much out of it as they could have playing in a lower grade. Both were forwards and struggled to run over people or make inroads at breakdowns because they other team had had that 1 extra year of training to correct tackle techniques and cleaning out etc Why should someone have to play with people older and more physically ready because parents are too scared of their precious skinny small child getting hurt. It is a physical sport and people should be playing in their age grade. It is the perfect chance for people to get some mongrel into them.
As a big bloke, I use to hate the little cunts on the field, they were way too quick. But you good ragdoll them once you got a hold of them.
Knee to the head as he went in to make a tackle. Got ko'd.. brain hemerage or someshit. Family turned life support off as he was going to be a vegetable
In schools they have age groups, and weight divisions in NZ. The top teams for each level are generally open. I played under 14s, 15s etc which were all open, but there were plenty of grades restricted by weight. I think 1xv, and 2nd grade were open. 3-7th grade were restricted. 3rd grade was in the 77-85kg range, 4th grade 70-76 etc, and It just gets smaller and smaller as you go up to 7th grade.
Heard a term a few years ago in NZ " The browning of the game" think it was some kind of study on the larger Polynesian kids and how there forcing smaller white kids into soccer etc.
Shit idea tbh. I am on the smaller side, and when I played juniors I prided myself on matching it with the bigger blokes. If you aren't tough enough, go play Soccer or Tennis or some shit. And what happens when one of these litle blokes is good enough in he older grades. He has to jump up from playing against 60 kg kids to 100+ kg blokes.
Sounds shit. I was probably the smallest player on our team, but prided myself on taking down the big guys. Rugby would have been ruined if I had been forced to play down a level because of my size
There are a few cases where it makes sense though, imo. At primary school we had a 6 foot, fastest-in-the-grade guy in grade 4. Now imagine a bunch of 10 year olds trying to play rugby against him. But in general, it's way more important to play against guys of your age and therefore development than guys of your size.
They have weight restrictions in NZ and they don't mean shit. If you want to play with bigger guys, you can.
