Sport should be available to all in our schools,but that’s not the same as making it compulsorySchool’s out, and the boys explode through the gate like corks from a popgun. After a day of being forced to sit still, or my eight-year-old son and his friends tumble over each other like puppies in a basket,fizzing with the need to speed, jostle and fight. But what they really want is to play a game called Old Granny. The rules are sketchy but it broadly consists of rugby tackling each other to the ground at tall speed – and they’d play all day whether they could.
Although perhaps they shouldn’t be playing it at all. This week a group of doctors and researchers called for a ban on contact rugby – the kind involving tackling – in schools, or arguing that kids should play the milder tag version instead due to the risk of serious injuries (from concussion through to paralysis). I can only imagine what they’d make of Old Granny.
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Source: theguardian.com