The Sri Lanka Schools Rugby Football season is to kick off beginning the 20th of April. The launch of the Singer sponsored schools rugby season was held on the 10th of April. Singer announced that in addition to the sponsorship package they will provide funding to the schools in the top league.

Additionally this year they will fund the schools at the bottom of the league so that these schools can continue the game. While Singer made their intention of staying with rugby in the schools the President of the Sri Lanka Schools Rugby Football Association Ranjith Chandrasekera made some startling revelations.

He said that the focus of parents is to direct their children to attain academic qualifications and time is spent in this area. He explained that promoting rugby as a sport was not easy as in addition there was an injury factor that dissuaded parents. Additionally he made a case that sport (rugby) by itself does not take students very far and that very few of rugby players entered university according to information gathered by him. He to some extent contradicted himself by saying that as principal of Kingswood College he noticed that when a studious player captained they did well. However without comparison with other sports one cannot come to a conclusion on the descriptive statements. Still the comments need to be carefully looked at as it is just not rugby. The tendency to shy away from sports does not encourage the development of an all round student that is needed to lead the future.

The inclination to involve in sport and the time spent getting less he was of the view that continuation in sport will be a difficult task. Rugby being a contact sport might be affected and as a body they will need to change. This is why a suggestion was made to the union that the duration of under- 20 school matches be reduced to seventy minutes. He was of the view that playing 80 minutes of rugby was too much for schoolboys as according to information collated from a questionnaire sent to all schools revealed that rugby players are exposed to injury.

The schools rugby season is just around the corner.

The view of the Sri Lanka Rugby Football Union as presented by Vice President Lasith Gunaratne was different. He was looking at the issue form a point of the input to the National team and the domestic club season. He was of the view that there is a problem as people from the schools have only an exposure of around two years of 15 side rugby and the technical aspects are not well polished resulting in the players having to be taught basic rugby at club and national level. Reducing the game by 10 minutes would weaken the input further and there are more issues to be discussed than the time duration.

He was of the view that the foundation was weak as most schools did not have qualified coaches and junior teams were handled by a senior player or somebody who had little training. He was also of the view that coaches tend to make players continue to play with injury without adequate rest and results in more injury than those resulting from playing a long duration .He also announced that the High Performance Coach from Japan will be in Sri Lanka will be here for a three month period to enable improve coaching and training methods leading to high performance. Professor Yuichi Ueno Dean of Sport Science of the Ryutsu Keizai University of Japan and involved in high performance coaching in Japan the person expected. The exchange of opposed views by the governing body and the constituent needs closer examination and it looked like cutting the nose to spite the face at an event where a sponsor is pushing to promote a sport.

Research on this subject published in many sports medical journals do accept that a rugby player is exposed to injury .The conclusion however is that it is no different compared to other sports and in some there is more injury.

How can we prevent rugby-related injuries has been addressed in these research paper. • Prevention programmes targeting safe tackling techniques have a large potential for decreasing rugby injuries. Strategies include providing coaches with material to help them run proper tackling drills, showing players videos demonstrating proper tacking techniques, and encouraging referees to penalize unsafe tackling. • Coaches and athletic trainers should ensure that all players are well conditioned and are adequately prepared for the physical nature of matches.

A recent study conducted by the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) investigated the link between physical activity in children and academic performance in school. Initially, researchers predicted that kids who took physical education (PE) during the school day would do better academically. The study, reported in ACSM's official journal, Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, examined 214 children of middle school age. All students were randomly assigned to a PE class in either the first or second semester of the school year.

Researchers collected information on each student's activity level in and outside of the PE class, and compared their level of activity to their grades in the subjects of math, science, world studies and English. Surprisingly, researchers found that being enrolled in PE (moderate activity for 30 minutes, 5 days per week) did not influence the children's grades. The government's Healthy People 2010 guidelines recommend vigorous activity for 20 minutes, at least 3 days per week. This study showed that the more active children were, such as participating in a sport or other vigorous activity, the better they did in school.

Vimal Perera is a former Rugby Referee, coach and Accredited Referees Evaluator IRB