What Can Rugby Learn from School Boxing?

Organised sport in schools emerged in the mid-nineteenth century. There had been some Cricket and Rowing before that, but anything resembling a regular programme of compulsory sport owes its foundation to structural initiatives at Rugby School in the 1830s. Team games were the flagships of the programme, principally football and cricket, but there were other additions which were prominent and influential. These included fives and cross-country running. And boxing. It is significant that pugilism was part of school sport since its inception. Games such as Netball and Tennis came almost a hundred years later.

Equally significant is the longevity of boxing. Enthusiastically embraced by emerging state-funded schools in the early twentieth century, it became an accepted part of the school sports programme. In 1958, there were 58,000 entrants in the English Schools Boxing Championships. That number is roughly equivalent to the number of pupils playing contact Rugby in senior schools today.

The storm clouds were gathering around the future of boxing by 1960. A campaign led by MPs and doctor, Edith Summerskill sought to have it banned on the grounds that the level of risk involved was unacceptably high. It was felt to be inconsistent with the values of a post-war society. There were several votes in parliament aimed at banning boxing in schools on those grounds. All were lost.

Contrary to what has become popular conception, boxing was never banned in schools. Not legally, anyway. It simply fell out of fashion as attitudes changed. With raised awareness of its dangers, many parents became increasingly uncomfortable with the concept and the risk. By 1962, most schools had voluntarily removed the activity from their programme. It fell out of fashion, and slipped away. It was never to return. That is unlikely ever to change.

Rugby Football was established at almost exactly the same time that boxing became commonplace in schools. It enjoyed the same unquestioned acceptance, and thrived in an era when attitudes to risk were different and parents were yet to find their critical voice. But its trajectory has changed direction in the twenty first century. A perfect storm of medical evidence has raised the question of acceptable risk, and numbers playing the contact game in schools have been significantly revised. Downwards. The number of sixth form players is at an all-time low. Compulsion to participate is history.

Boxing failed to adjust to the changing attitudes of its time, and paid the price. Once it disappeared from schools, its character changed, and participation slumped.

Rugby in schools must heed this experience. In a shifting landscape, the game is doing much to reinvent itself to better fit the contemporary educational environment. The RFU is significantly invested in alternative forms of the game, with varying levels of contact, in order to widen the appeal. Improved safety protocols have undoubtedly reduced risk levels. Alpha male behaviour associated with the game is rightly challenged by schools, and the context of Rugby is changing. This is an essential journey to making the game acceptable to the next generation of parents and school leaders. The experience of boxing is, however, a salutary one. No game is too big to fail.