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Reaction is overwhelming after Petrus du Plessis tweets about his son's school bullying ordeal
By Online Editors
Newly appointed Australia scrum coach Petrus du Plessis, the former Glasgow prop and coach, has generated an overwhelming reaction on social media after sharing his son’s experience of bullying at school in Scotland.
The recent Dave Rennie staff recruit shared on Twitter on Wednesday evening an audio recording of some of the threats and abuse sent to his son at school.
Although he has since deleted this particular tweet, he has shared a message thanking those for the support he has received online since, whilst also mentioning the lack of support he has received from the school.
Ex-Glasgow forward du Plessis said: “Thank you for the response regarding my son’s bullying. I don’t want parents and children to go through the same ordeal. Educate your children. Speak up and stand up to bullying.”
He also provided a further summary of the events, saying his aim was to “make parents aware of bullying where it can cause a child to have lasting mental health problems".
He wrote: “We did take our son out the school, another child was also removed with the same problem. We have emailed the school over 40 times, made a huge complaint and informed MPs, governors, councillors and the council. The response we got was only stating that the school did everything they could. However, the bullying never stopped.”
Du Plessis tagged the Respect Me organisation in the tweet, the group that describes itself as Scotland's anti-bullying service, providing “free anti-bullying training, policy support, resources, and national campaigns”.
In his extensive message, du Plessis closed by saying that it had been “poor communication throughout”, but since he made this ordeal public twelve children from the school had come out to share a similar experience.
The South African has been widely commended online for sharing this, not only to help expose and prevent this from happening but in order to hold the school to account.
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Latest Comments
The boy needs to bulk up if wants to play 10 or 11 to handle those hits, otherwise he could always make a brilliant reserve for the wings if he stays away from the stretcher.
Go to commentsIn another recent article I tried to argue for a few key concept changes for EPCR which I think could light the game up in the North.
First, I can't remember who pointed out the obvious elephant in the room (a SA'n poster?), it's a terrible time to play rugby in the NH, and especially your pinnacle tournament. It's been terrible watching with seemingly all the games I wanted to watch being in the dark, hardly able to see what was going on. The Aviva was the only stadium I saw that had lights that could handle the miserable rain. If the global appeal is there, they could do a lot better having day games.
They other primary idea I thuoght would benefit EPCR most, was more content. The Prem could do with it and the Top14 could do with something more important than their own league, so they aren't under so much pressure to sell games. The quality over quantity approach.
Trim it down to two 16 team EPCR competitions, and introduce a third for playing amongst the T2 sides, or the bottom clubs in each league should simply be working on being better during the EPCR.
Champions Cup is made up of league best 15 teams, + 1, the Challenge Cup winner. Without a reason not to, I'd distribute it evenly based on each leauge, dividing into thirds and rounded up, 6 URC 5 Top14 4 English. Each winner (all four) is #1 rank and I'd have a seeding round or two for the other 12 to determine their own brackets for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. I'd then hold a 6 game pool, home and away, with consecutive of each for those games that involve SA'n teams. Preferrably I'd have a regional thing were all SA'n teams were in the same pool but that's a bit complex for this simple idea.
That pool round further finalises the seeding for knockout round of 16. So #1 pool has essentially duked it out for finals seeding already (better venue planning), and to see who they go up against 16, 15,etc etc. Actually I think I might prefer a single pool round for seeding, and introduce the home and away for Ro16, quarters, and semis (stuffs up venue hire). General idea to produce the most competitive matches possible until the random knockout phase, and fix the random lottery of which two teams get ranked higher after pool play, and also keep the system identical for the Challenge Cup so everthing is succinct. Top T2 side promoted from last year to make 16 in Challenge Cup
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