Whilst the World Cup has grabbed most of the headlines recently, and rightly so, the new season quietly brought in some exciting changes to the structure of Scottish Schools and Youth rugby. They were rubber stamped at a recent HQ meeting although there was resistance from some members who wanted the implementation delayed until 2016.
The changes will result in the first organised league system for Scotland’s schools, alongside a revised club youth league structure. This will apply to all groups from Under 13 up to Under 18.
Secondary Schools which can raise a team at every age level have been grouped together into 6 ‘conferences’ based on the number of teams they can field and the quality of their development programmes. There are 47 schools participating, of which 24 are state schools, some supported by the Scottish Government CashBack for Communities funding. Many of the state school are working in partnership with their local rugby clubs to help promote the game more widely and assist with young player development.
The Youth structure within rugby clubs will follow a similar approach with 4 conferences involving 24 clubs and one independent school. There are separate conferences for the far north of the country and the Borders region.
According to the SRU the aim of the competition structure is to place an emphasis on the longer-term development process. It is also designed to increase the quantity and quality of fixtures being played at all age levels and ensure more players across Scotland have access to strong rugby development programmes.
Many young players currently play twice at the weekend; once for their school and then again for their club. The SRU’s vision is that young players play only once, either for their school or club, and that through doing so extra space for new players to come into the game will be created.
The competitions will run from September through to December, with results (of which we already have 2 week’s worth) and tables published on the SRU website.
http://www.scottishrugby.org/fixtures-results-schools-youth
There are some real short-term challenges for some clubs, most notably in sourcing additional players to replace those who may be committed to playing for their school instead. However the drive to increase player numbers across the country and the additional focus on player development should help the long-term game in Scotland at every level.
Scottish Rugby’s Head of Schools & Youth, Colin Thomson said:
“We have taken time over the last year to meet with schools and clubs to understand their needs and aspirations and through undertaking healthy debate with our member clubs and affiliated schools we are delighted and hugely excited to be announcing this new playing structure which will drive the rugby development agenda over the next few years.”
Former Scotland head coach Frank Hadden who liaised with the schools sector during the development of the new programme said: “We needed a structure that creates more opportunities for children to play the game at a realistic level and be able to take their abilities as far as they can.”
26 Responses
Whilst the overarching principles of this seem sound, there is going to be undeniable collateral damage which I think is down-played, both in statements from SRU and the article above.
Many small Rugby clubs outside of the larger population centres are only able to exist because of kids who are prepared to ‘double up’ – generally from private schools which you often find in more rural locations. To deny those kids the opportunity to play for the club, and instead insist that they play for their school leaves the clubs with a gap – a gap that will be the difference between being able to fulfil fixtures or not – and fundamentally, that’s why kids come to a club – to play games.
In my experience, the success of the development officer programmes is very mixed – particularly in rural rugby where the distance that the development officer is required to travel means that contact can be fleeting at best. They are inevitably drawn to schools where there is already a commitment to Rugby, rather than targeting those with poor/no Rugby interest. This RWC should have seen a real upturn in new players – if you can’t convince kids to come down and try Rugby for this first time now – then you never will, but there has been no noticeable change in pace of development officer activity, and we’ve already seen 2 high schools in our area try to get Rugby off the ground during RWC, but give up when the promise of support from SRU never materialised. This was a huge opportunity missed…..but I digress, back to the new structure….
…. we seem to have 2 main issues – firstly, lack of player numbers, and not just player numbers, but good players – the kind of guys that you need in your team to help bring others on. If these kids are tied to their school, any new recruits come into a team stripped of talent – so if there are enough kids to put a team out, in all likelihood they get thumped because the core of experienced players left simply can’t paper over the cracks. Inevitable result is that you wave goodbye to your new recruits, and more than likely some of your more established kids who are likely to leave to larger clubs who now find that they have a full and healthy fixture list.
Secondly, if your club is not part of the new structure, where does that leave you? With other larger clubs now having to fulfil a tighter schedule of matches, small clubs are forced to spread their net wider and wider to find games. The increased expense and logistical challenges of this will drive away even more kids (or parents – which is essentially the same thing). I guess I’m sounding a bit doom and gloom, but we’ve already seen this start to happen at our club – numbers are dropping, kids are moving to large club 20 mins away and you now have the ridiculous scenario where one ‘big’ club in the area has over 40 registered S1 players, whereas 8 small clubs within 20 minute drive are unable to raise a team – when you ask the parents why they’re moving, the answer is always the same – because the big team get more fixtures. I simply don’t see how these changes address this, if anything I think they make it worse.
And if we take a quick look at some of the results in those conferences – the Presidents Conference for instance, the top of the Club game.
Do you think Boroughmuir or Highland Under 18s are gaining much from this system, or perhaps West of Scotland or Currie Under 16s – will they be enjoying their rugby, or Highland or West of Scotland Under 15s, or … well you get the picture, and that’s just the top Club sides in the country. Just wait till you see the results from the other conferences (or lack of results might be more appropriate).
We’re forcing Clubs to field teams at age groups against other Clubs who we know they can’t compete against, and we are excluding other Clubs from appropriate competitive games just because they don’t have a full youth section.
The vision might be appropriate, but the path we’re taking to get there doesn’t feel like the right one (at least from many Clubs perspective).
What do you and the other posters suggest then?
The school or club split is indeed being underplayed.
Why kids can’t play 2 x games in a weekend if they are fit, is beyond me and most peope I know. I remember lots of kids, including me, playing 2 games on the same day, never mind the same weekend.
It’s leaving gaping holes for some teams which just can’t be filled.
It really is fantastic that many of the state schools are becoming involved in rugby who never were before. Long overdue, and a potential new stream of players. But there is a danger that forcing kids and parents to make a choice between club and school will fatally undermine these fledgling societies.
I think we need some more careful examination of the facts before this new system is rubbished by other comments. Paul asks ‘what are Highland U.18s gaining from this system?’Certainly Highland lost 3 out of their first four games but they lost them by 3 points 8 points and 13points and were in with a chance of winning everyone of them almost to the final whistle.They are gaining much more from this system than last year when they finished second and spent half of the season handing out 40 and 50 point defeats to the bottom half of the league.Those who have fond memories of last years set up should consider the fact that the winners Currie averaged nearly 50points per game over a 14 game season .Given that they had close competition at the top of the league it does not take a genius to imagine the results against the bottom half who were struggling to keep the scoreboard below three figures.
Nor can I understand the comments regarding Club v School matches .Indeed there are genuine concerns about player numbers but that is not solved by believing we have strong junior clubs when in fact it is created by a small group of talented players playing for more than one team!All of the teams that have a cosy relationship with the local public school can field competitive teams as shown by the new league structure and whilst it must be disappointing that they can’t just transform their teams for big fixtures by importing a troop of public school boys let us consider instead the players who are now playing regularly in those teams and not being dropped to the sidelines.
Overall having tough matches every week is the way to develop our young players and for both Schools and Clubs this is what this new system is providing.Allied to the District Academy system ,hopefully with more matches at that level we will finally drag Scottish junior rugby out of the mists of time and into the modern game.
I think tougher competition for the bigger clubs is all well and good, but this system rewards those clubs for having the player pool to compete, and penalises small clubs that don’t. It’s great that it works for you, but at the same time you have to acknowledge that this ‘one structure for all’ approach is seriously damaging clubs in lesser populated areas.
And I think that’s the crux of the issue – there needs to be recognition of the challenges faced by small clubs, and a strategy to address these. Instead, we’ve got larger clubs who are doing well under the new system sitting on their high horse saying ‘I’m alright jack!’
Ok, Highland Under 18s are a bad example. What tough competitive matches are Glasgow Hawks playing? They’re excluded from playing the likes of Highland, Ayr, Currie and County in a competitive league as they didn’t have a full youth section at the time of setting the Club leagues – yet they have one of the bigger youth sections in West Region (and several players in the pathway system) – where are these boys being pressured to apply their skills in a competitive environment – certainly not the Club Conference system.
How about a look at how it works down under where club and school seasons are separate and dovetail with each other so there is no conflict
Generally supportive of competitive rugby being played at school level is important.
I do, however, sadly note that the elitist spirit in Scottish rugby is still fully engaged. Unless I’m massively misunderstanding the way these conferences work, we have 3 leagues which are fee paying exclusively, 1 with a smattering of ‘B’ teams in it and 3 exclusively state school conferences.
Surely, in 2015 there is no place for this nonsense in school boy rugby?
Am I being unduly harsh? Does anybody know the reasons behind this?
I think it’s a best v best idea, Frank Hadden was at the forefront of it, to provide appropriate levels of competition. The fee paying schools have the best resources, structures etc. There didn’t seem any point in a Strathallen, Stewarts Melville etc. playing a state school and beating them 85 nil and the state school got nothing out of being humped. As such they’ve been put in conferences based on resources rather than being elitist. I think that was the gist of it from what I read anyway. Maybe someone else can add more.
I know that they are massively well resourced but I’m really not sure how state school players are meant to benefit if they aren’t playing regularly against the best.
As a former pupil of North Berwick, I fondly remember the 3 year period in which we were regularly playing and beating the first teams of the fee paying schools in Edinburgh. Since then, 5/6 of the players from that core squad went on and played top division rugby, and 10 or so were playing age grade Scottish rugby.
I don’t see how segregation along lines of pure cash/ability of parents to pay helps build the game. It only serves to widen the gap.
The school leagues are based on a) competitive standing, b) the number of teams a school can turn out and c), below the Red league, geography.
The competitive standings look about right. The highest-placed state school, Bell-Baxter HS, is mid-table in a tier 2 league. It will take a while, a lot of work and resources for the state schools to match the top independent ones. We sort of know that already from the Cup results, where the last 16 are always predominantly independents.
A second reason the three top leagues (Red, White, Blue) are almost exclusively independent schools is that they are all turning out 10 teams, a 1st XV and 2nd XV at each of the 5 age-grade levels. The other three leagues are only fielding 5. This matters because the modus operandii is that whole school plays whole school, 20 teams turn out when Dollar plays Dundee High,
but 10 when Royal High plays Linlithgow Academy.
The tier 3 Black league, which is West, gives an indication of where the state schools are in performance terms. It comprises 5 smaller independents and 4 state schools. Jordanhill College school (state) is doing quite well, but the leaders are St Columbas and Morrisons (independent), the other state schools are further down the table.
I think it’s a very good and overdue initiative and amazing that Frank Hadden got the independents to participate. It means more games for the boys and more competitive, testing fixtures, all long overdue.
It is important to note though that the schools conferences just group those existing rugby-playing schools which can field 5 teams into leagues. There are just 16 state schools that can do so, out of 300+ Scottish secondaries, which shows how parlous schools rugby has become.
There is to be a 2-year moratorium on promotion/relegation until the system is bedded-in.
The figure for schools participating was meant to be 47 (24 state) but that was reduced to 41 (16 state) when the Border clubs insisted on having club rather than school teams at U-16 and U-18.
So in this scenario, once the promotion/relegation comes into affect after 2 years, is it possible for a school that can’t field 10 teams to compete with schools higher up the chain? If, as you give in your example, Royal High perform well, beat everybody and get promoted with 5 teams playing every week but come up against Dundee High who can put out 10, will Royal High be punished for the fact that despite having a great team, they can’t field compete in playing numbers?
I agree that competitive schools rugby is fantastic and to get the fee paying schools involved is a minor miracle given their usual position but I’m genuinely interested in understanding if it’s possible for the poorer resourced state schools to make it to a higher level.
I don’t know the answer to that one Cameron. The independents have been pretty co-operative so far and I suppose it’s possible that they would make an exception for a school that had (only!) 5 teams. However, in the real world, it would be a big loss of face for one of these top 17 independents to be relegated to a tier 3 league, so I would not be surprised if they insisted on participants having 10 teams. Keen state schools will get there in time.
It may be that promotion and relegation will work further down the tree, with Black the top league in West and Green the top one in East, with new leagues forming below them in Glasgow North, South-West, Central and Tayside & Fife, to add to Edinburgh’s Purple league.
is there any prospect of promotion/ relegation?
There needs to be a bit of realism about what is actually being achieved in the schools conferences – of the six conferences – three are playing 5 games, two 6 games and one 8 games across the age groups, over the months of September, October and November.
There is also the cup competition, but this existed in previous years.
Nobody seems to know what the SRUs plans to be happening after Xmas in either schools of Clubs regarding youth rugby.
Is the new schools conference system going to re-invigorate grassroots rugby enough to make up for the negative feelings that have been create in Clubs?
The SRU’s original target for the Schools of Rugby, which one assumes would be the same for the Schools Conferences, was a minimum of 10 league fixtures per season plus Cup games. What was envisaged I think was leagues of 6 playing home and away. Maybe the Conferences will develop in that direction if the schools are up for it, certainly 5-8 league games is not a lot.
The Spring term was set aside for representative rugby, which I assume meant age-grades, pathways etc. I’m not sure we will ever get back to full-on school rugby from September to March, as schools offer a much wider range of sports these days and have football, hockey etc to factor in as well.
The mechanism to re-invigorate schools rugby is the Schools of Rugby programme, which aims to get many more state schools eventually turning out 5 teams. There are currently 30 schools participating, of which 4 are playing in the Schools Conference, 5 I think in the Borders school-Youth league and 21 playing in local tournaments. The stated long-term aim is to have 60 SORs.It should lead fairly soon to more Conference leagues appearing.
Your question though is about re-invigorating grassroots rugby, by which I assume you mean club rugby? I think there is a tension and an issue here between school and club youth rugby and this is the elephant in the room. In the past, the rugby-playing schools generated a conveyor belt of boys, of whom the more able went into the club colts. With the demise of school rugby, the clubs are now turning out their own S1-U18 youth sides, taking whatever boys they can find from local schools, usually a limited number, hence continued numbers weakness at grass roots. By doing so, they effectively blunt these schools developing into serious rugby schools, hence the grass roots remain bleak.
There are too many examples of schools stopping playing regular rugby, because their boys have been recruited – some would say poached! – by the local rugby club. Hence the flow of young lads playing has reduced to small numbers.
It seems to me logical that if you get the school playing numbers up, then the overall grass-roots will be healthier, many more players coming through. However, the clubs would need to be patient in respect of the 60 intended rugby-playing schools and wait a few years and that is the problem – they can’t and won’t. I think this issue needs to be addressed but there is no single simple solution.
Cripes, I get what you’re saying, but have reservations about the sustainability of the current plan.
You mention getting back to full-on schools rugby, but I’m wondering how far back we have to go to get a picture of when this actually existed. I wonder if you and I would have the same conversation that I have with some of the older guys in the Club who despair at the fact that we are only fielding two xvs, but reminisce about the “glory” days when the Club regularly fielded five.
We need a new model based around our current circumstances – for us in the West Region, we’re competing against football, basketball, bmxing, mountain biking, american football, badmington, swimming, MMA, plus numerous other sports that are readily available to youngsters.
Getting rugby onto the school curriculum is a huge achievement, but the new system has been build around prioritising the schools, whilst kicking the clubs in the ghoolies. It’s been dropped on the Clubs from a great height, and with minimal consultation, and little clarity about what’s going to happen after this term of 5 or 6 conference matches is complete.
And in a couple of years time, when this current batch of funding runs out – what then. Murrayfield are currently buying out teacher time to deliver rugby, without the money, will the teachers continue to deliver the programme?
The Club programme that’s filled the gap left since the teacher strike of the 80s, is based on volunteers with the best interest of the game at heart. The SRU, have to some degree, turned their backs on this resource and determined that they need to pay people (many who currently don’t volunteer and have limited game coaching experience) to deliver the programme going forward.
The idea of schools rugby is fantastic, however I fear for how long this current programme can be sustained.
There is a lot of detail in this thread which, while necessary for an understanding, tends to obfuscate the bigger picture.
The core issue is that we have nothing like the real (as opposed to SRU token!) numbers playing regular school/youth rugby that our competitors do. We would need to double or treble the numbers to be in remote touching distance of NZ, Ireland, Wales, England etc. As there is no prospect of life returning to the heady rugby days before the teachers’ strike in the 1980s, we need to box clever.
The clubs have done valiantly in taking up the slack, getting mini rugby going, helping the local schools and turning out youth teams, which has involved a colossal amount of work by volunteers. But overall, it has not led to an upsurge in the key 12-17 age-grade numbers, we are treading water. Outside the Borders, the youth competitions have been pretty patchy. Even in the new youth structure, under a third of the clubs are participants.
The structure sort of works for the bigger town and city clubs, Stirling, Hamilton, Dunfermline, Falkirk, Inverness etc, because they have 3-4-5 secondary schools to draw on, they just need one or two playing some rugby to have enough boys to man their youth teams. It is much harder for the smaller town and rural clubs with just one school. If that school is playing serious rugby, the boys won’t necessarily want to turn out again on the Sunday for the club – and the protocol for these new leagues is that the boys should only play once each weekend for either school OR club, if it’s only giving 6-week taster sessions in each sport, there won’t be too many boys heading to the clubhouse. So the system basically favours some 50 bigger clubs, as long as they can swipe the school players and not let the schools start playing serious school rugby and wanting them back. It is not really a very useful or sustainable model.
Schools playing regular competitive matches gets the numbers up and also the experience. This is the route the Kiwis and Ireland have taken, total emphasis on schools. Wales and England play a hybrid, Wales has 60 serious rugby schools but also club youth teams, England is all over the place. As the strategy to achieve the aim, school rugby looks the best bet, as long as it is allied with club work at mini level and a club colts team to absorb the school boys coming in.
How does one reconcile these two opposite forces, schools and clubs? The SRU has actually addressed aspects of this, though inevitably there are compromises to placate the clubs, some of them unworkable. I think the broad rules need to be:
a) The top schools play school rugby to U-18 level, after that they are encouraged to join a club colts. That should apply to the top 5 school leagues (34 schools, of which 9 state)
b) The Tier 4 school leagues should play school rugby to age 15, therefore U-16, thereafter they should be encouraged to switch en masse to the clubs. (Tier 4? – the SRU originally proposed 8 x Tier 4 leagues, which hasn’t happened yet, as clubs and schools are cross-trumping each other here, but they are still on the cards). I don’t understand why the club coaches, who are generally better qualified than many of the teachers, can’t go in to help the school U-16 teams, rather than insisting the U-16s go to the club, this kind of turf war/p*****g contest is really not very helpful.
c) As the SRU says in their original document in April this year, the clubs can draw on the other 200 state schools (in fact 250) which aren’t involved in the schools conferences for their youth recruits.
d) As the schools are only playing rugby in the autumn term, the boys should be encouraged to play for the club in the Spring term, from year 1 onwards. (The vague SRU proposal is that schools play friendlies or clubs in the Spring term). Many will of course be doing the other sports that Paul mentions, but the keen ones should find their way to the club. It would mean re-casting the club youth season for many clubs from Autumn to Spring, but at least it is a workable arrangement, unlike the present one of the boys being in the middle of a tug of war.
None of the above solves the issue of what happens when a smaller club has one school to draw on and that school starts playing serious rugby. I think the SRU would need to relax its new rules and let the boys play for the school Saturday and turn out for the club on a Sunday. It is not ideal, but it will probably only apply to about 20 clubs.
Paul is right that the Schools of Rugby programme is heavily dependent on Cashback money from the Scottish Government and it would be prudent to assume it won’t last forever. In the future, the SRU and local authorities may need to take up the running, with some help from government. If the whole is working and generating the numbers, it should be easier to sweet-talk the money sources.
Apologies to all for long weary posts, I will shut up now!
Cripes, you touch on a point I think we should all be considering.
It’s not about what the schools and/or clubs are doing this season, it’s about radically growing the participation in our sport over the next 5 to 10 years.
But we need to define what we mean by participation (you mention playing regularly), and we need to figure out how we create significant growth over a number of years.
Looking at the schools and youth leagues, I’m not sure how many players we could reliably describe as playing regular competitive rugby (you mention Falkirk – in the past they’ve been noted as having a youth system others should look towards, but this years Conference fixtures shows significant issues with them fulfilling fixtures).
We’ve got to start with where we are today, so the argument about Club v School is probably irrelevant – it’s where we’re starting from and success for Scottish rugby needs both operating at a much higher level. We need to find a way to grow the participation rates (playing regular rugby) and we need to improve the level the teams and players are performing at (both Clubs and schools).
Now the question is, how do we achieve this?
We certainly need to increase participation in the sport considerably. There are two main points at which to do that, one is getting boys into the game at an early age, the other is retaining them through and after university.
Ref the numbers, on paper we look to be at the races, for instance teenage boys playing the game, as best one can find it out:
Ireland: 57,800
NZ: 40,300
Scotland: 32,200
Wales: 21,300
The problem is, we know the others have serious, competitive school and youth leagues, whereas most of our players are only playing a handful of games a season, if the oppos turn up, and these often not competitive. Our figure includes a lot of boys who have had a brief soupcon of rugby experience, rather than a total of serious players, so we are in reality a long way adrift.
With the new school and youth structures, the number of boys playing is up considerably and fulfilled fixtures are up 50% on last season, though both from a very low base. This is the benefit of introducing competitive leagues, rather than the friendlies and ad hoc fixtures last season. It’s a start.
The core issue of growing the numbers does IMHO come back though to the schools-youth divide. Clubs can turn out youth teams if they keep their mini players interested into their teens and the parents bring their kids along to the club. But it is hard work, under 50 of the 150 clubs have been able to field 4 or 5 age-grade teams and they are often very tight for numbers. I don’t see that the clubs can do much more and that is the limitation on the club route.
The schools are a completely different animal. They have several hundred boys at their beck and call, they can get rugby going if persuaded, particularly with a little help from the SRU, which they are getting. There are 40 schools already playing, fielding 5 plus teams each. The schools look to be up for it, because there are another 60 who were going to start this season, fielding 3 or 4 teams up to U-16 in new regional leagues.
They haven’t really got underway, because at this level (tier 4), the clubs are allowed to use the school players and they got in quick, 40 of the 60 schools have seen their players disappear off to play in the Youth leagues. The schools can still play on a Saturday, but it is hardly the way to give the schools the scope and encouragement to grow school rugby.
Basically, I think that the clubs, albeit with the best motives and a can-do approach, are cutting right across the people best-placed to deliver the conveyor belt of numbers that the game needs. The schools need to be left alone to develop their rugby culture and teams, then the game can look forward to a good, steady stream of players coming into the clubs at age 16 which will lift our numbers considerably. But that is not going to happen as things stand, we are back to doing largely what we have been doing since the teachers’ strike back in the ’80s, so there is no obvious dawn on the horizon.
At least the level the teams are playing at is improving performance, as school and youth alike are now playing in pretty competitive leagues, if moreso in the schools set-up.
As with all rugby nations, the biggest drop-off point in participation is at ages 15-17, the latter when the boys go up to university, which 50% plus do. This hits club numbers hard, the SRU is looking at ways of tackling this and improving retention rates, but I think they are a good way off finding a practical solution.
Unless someone can correct me, it seems that the timings for the rugby are shadowing the structure of sport in most of the fee paying schools. By this I mean that they only usually play rugby in the first school term(up until xmas), then play different sports in terms 2 and 3.
(At least that is the case in England.)
It does mean that the boys who want to play rugby all year round, will need to go to the clubs in terms 2 and 3. Possibly, the same clubs they may have been forced to ignore in term 1.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not trying to be negative here, merely stating one of he issues. It must have been a daunting task trying trying to add some organisational layers to a multi-ethos, multi- schedule school systems.
I’m a bit incredulous though, that it has taken so long to make a start. I didn’t realise that there were such restricted rugby structures in Scotland before, and that everything was so fragmented. I’m pleased to see that efforts are now being made to improve this.
Although there might be some teething issues, as well as some issues of understanding (not least of which are my own),the positive step and the organisation into competitive leagues can only help to expand and improve the rugby playing population.
That’s right PO or at least how it used to be in my day. Rugby in the Winter term then Hockey in the Spring
If that is still the case then you run school comps pre xmas and club ones in the new year. Just have to convince the schools to release their players to the local clubs in the new year
Problem solved and everyone happy :)
Side issue
The photo at the top of this page says “ready to defend” I say anything but. Count the players with their hands on their legs and looking in. Count the players with no idea who the man they are marking is – all but one I think and he is the one pointing
Are they doing out to in or in to out as I would expect. If it is in to out then they all have the wrong foot up
Pretty weak on the basics of defence there – as i said it’s a side issue but it’s embarrassing
Interestingly, the team that night featured Adam Ashe, Scott Steele, Tommy(asso) Allan (nearest to camera), Jonny Gray (centre of the line in pic), Rory Hughes and Mark Bennett:
http://www.scottishrugbyblog.co.uk/2013/03/scotland-u20-wales-u20/
Obviously some have worked on their skills since that gloomy night…
All in all at least its a step in the right direction no? Everyone will have opinions, fears and ideas that they think is better but at least the SRU is TRYING to get up to speed. Hopefully these ideas will develop over time to something that most, if not everyone, will be happy with.