Too much coverage of schools rugby?

Sir, – Your paper’s decision to choose a south Dublin fee-paying school’s rugby team, which had just defeated another fee-paying school in a schools junior rugby final, for your front page photograph (March 24th) raises several questions.

Is it unique in the media world that a paper such as yours, sometimes referred to as a paper of record, would consider such an event as worthy of front page pictorial attention? Am I right in thinking that your sports section’s peculiar fixation on reporting in some detail on rugby in such schools, almost invariably fee-paying and in south Dublin though with occasional outposts north of the Liffey and outside of the capital, is a uniquely Irish phenomenon and without precedent elsewhere in the sporting world? If the answer to both these questions is Yes, it certainly must say something about our society and its media. However I am not sure what.

Yours, etc,

SEAMUS SMITH,

Kenmare House,

North Great Georges Street,

Dublin 1