THAT rugby should be a topic of interest ("Mother warns of rugby risk to young players", The Herald, August 26, and "Being a parent in the world of today is not child's play", The Herald, August 27) and on the centenary of the Great War is apposite; rugby union is a metaphor for the war of attrition on the western front.

The backs are the officers and the forwards are the other ranks. The two sides face one another across a narrow no-man's-land. A few yards are gained and lost.

Despite the brutality there is a notion of gentlemanly conduct - rugby does not have rules, it has "laws". The scrum is, literally, The Big Push. There is mud, the boredom of frequent stoppages and the dead ball then, just occasionally, the deadlock is broken and the line is broached.

The big no-no is the forward pass. Mobile armour, the blitzkrieg of the next war, was the forward pass - definitely not cricket.

Rugby is a bulwark of the class system. In the 1960s we would kick a ball around the streets of Glasgow and a dapper young crusading muscular Christian would pass and say: "Don't like the shape of the ball you're playing with, lads."

I went to an ordinary school; on the rugby pitch posh schools would rack up scores like substantial snooker breaks against us. It was the worst part of my education; I learned how to lose. It all fell into place 30 years later in Auckland when a boy came into the emergency depart­ment from the King's College v Auckland Grammar fixture, always a grudge match.

He had a dislocation of the fourth on fifth cervical vertebra. His coach leaned over the spinal board to which he was attached and told the boy he had played a blinder. I wanted to tell the coach where he could stuff his oval ball.

Dr Hamish Maclaren,

1 Grays Loan,

Thornhill,

Stirling.