On Rugby: The vexed issue of whether schoolboys should have the right to play for whatever club they want, without the permission of the school they are attending, has not gone away and doesn't look like doing so.

Neither the parent of the schoolboy who has served notice to issue High Court proceedings against the Leinster Branch and the IRFU, nor the solicitors acting on his behalf, have been given a response despite a request to wait until last Friday, and are set to formally lodge the papers in the High Court in a day or two unless one is belatedly forthcoming.

It would appear the schools' section are digging in their heels to maintain the branch's protectionist policy, and that the branch are somehow hoping the problem will just somehow go away. But that is clearly not the case. The action by the parent in question, whose son has apparently not been given permission to play for his club by the Leinster Section B school he is attending, has given added impetus to the clubs who feel they are being disadvantaged.

At a meeting of the Metropolitan clubs last Tuesday, a vote supporting the parent's action was passed by 20 to 2, with a similar agreement to await the Leinster Branch's deliberations about a proposed new underage competition.

As part of this new competition, the leading schools are due to release lists of players who will be made available to the clubs by September 23rd (this Friday), but the clubs are sceptical about how much co-operation they will receive from the schools. Nor does this answer the question as to why schools players will not be released after their schools' competitive season ends from, say, February or March onwards.

That the controversial rule 1.12 which prohibits schoolboys playing for their clubs has been suspended until October 31st doesn't cut much ice with the clubs or the parent in question.

As things stand, and have stood for generations, the opportunities for kids to play rugby are limited unless they live beside a rugby club or attend the relatively small pool of rugby playing schools, and as we can see the protectionism of the latter militates against the former.

By comparison, virtually every parish, town or village will have a GAA or football club, whereas comparatively few have a rugby club or a rugby playing school. At a time when rugby in Ireland has never attained a higher profile through the Heineken European Cup and the international scene, the continuing presence of this archaic imbalance in favour of the schools actually seeks only to prevent schoolboys from playing for clubs. The other major sports must be laughing heartily to themselves.

One can only guess how many talented young players are lost to the game after dipping their toes in mini-rugby. Accounts are plentiful of under-age coaches, mostly in rural, community-based clubs who maintain they are severely disadvantaged due to these policies and that at critical junctures teams break up - they have little or no competitive rugby in their teenage years, and other sports take precedence.

Ironically, the most progressive province in seeking to expand the growth of under-age rugby would seem to be Connacht. In contrast to Leinster especially, their Senior Schools Cup competition has become more broadly competitive in recent years and they have been making palpable progress at under-age level, witness the under-21s' win over Leinster recently.

The starting XV that took on Leinster showed an impressive geographical spread, featuring seven players from Galway, three from Mayo, three from Sligo and one from Roscommon, while their under-19 squad saw no less than 12 Connacht clubs represented.

Bearing this in mind, it is perhaps no coincidence that Connacht are the one province who place no bar on schoolboys playing for their clubs. A down side to this, as one member of Monivea points out, is a club like, say, Galwegians will bring in strong schools players and smaller clubs with no schools players to draw on will be no match for them. An even compromise, across the four branches, which only ring-fences the top 30 or so JCT and SCT squads of the leading schools' sides, would seem like an eminently fair compromise.

Alas, as we know, there will be imbalances in any under-age sport, but the lifeblood which schools players can give youths sections, in under-age teams and beyond, ensures the positives outweigh the negatives.

The availability of schools players can help clubs to field under-age sides through teenage years, and the increased skill levels which schools players could bring to under-age club sides can only be beneficial to their team-mates and help to increase standards.

Instead, the IRFU and three of the four branches promote a system whereby some schoolboys who attend elite rugby playing schools cannot play rugby at the weekend of their volition with clubs, but are permitted to play GAA or football with clubs in those sports.

Because of the more open policy in Connacht, a schoolboy who hails from that province and is attending say, Clongowes Wood, is free to play for Galwegians or whomever at the weekend. Meantime, a schoolboy at Clongowes who hails from any of the Section B schools in Leinster, is not permitted to play for his club side.

The ripple effect of all this led to one controversy whereby a player who had come through the schools system was repeating his Leaving Cert in a non rugby school, and playing with his club. He was selected for Connacht Youths and then for Irish Youths Trials, only to be told he was unavailable for selection, as he had gone through the schools system.

That, like so much else about this outmoded protectionism, is plainly daft.

gthornley@irish-times.ie