Whilst I agree it would be ideal to teach kids the skills but do you think you could retain them if they got beat in every game by a team who applied the "give it to the biggest lad" approach?

if it's a help football is exactly the same. parents running teams, only in it to cover themselves with glory. non existent coaching as the dad's play to win.
some parents are great but most aren't.
and football has spent millions on grass roots coaching

I think it's a sporting problem in general. Unfortunately while the top level is ticking over nicely often the people higher up he could have an impact probably won't.

It is. I coach Union and have done for nearly 10 years now (started when my son did at U6). Same story, everyone seems to have their own agenda - I guess including me, I just hope mine is a little more productive and less ed on my own child.
Swimming however is on another level. I can only assume we produce champion swimmers by accident (and the medal numbers probably back that up). Parents are a nightmare in swimming, usually because top clubs employ a coach and are run by parents. I have seen and heard of clubs literally torn apart by groups of parents pushing their own agenda or just wanting to f*** things up for everyone else out of jealousy or ignorance of how to actually train a swimmer. They all become experts and all think they know what their child should be doing - and very rarely does it match what a professional coach thinks. We had three years of it at the top level with my son, from 10 to 13 and I never want to have anything to do with it again and I certainly have no contact with any of the other parents I got to know in that time. I don't know one club that hasn't had parents try to bring it to it's knees, sack coaches etc. and some of the vendettas between clubs are hilarious, or they would be if they weren't so vindictive. In rugby you have a shouting match and maybe a bit of agro, in swimming it's done through solicitors (I've seen numerous court cases) and committee meetings and knives in the back. My son has been targeted because we dared to move club, his old club found a technicality in the county rules and had him banned from competing that year- to "protect him from exploitation as a swimmer" was the official explanation. The truth was his old coach was a total b**ch who should never have been allowed near children. Rugby is so much simpler, trust me.

Ouch. Sounds terrible that DHM. My experience of swimming back in the 80s was that you had to be extremely good indeed to get offered any coaching whatsoever but that seems better than the current nightmare.

I thought it was great to begin with, I knew nothing about it and had no parents giving me stick like I did at rugby. My lad was late into it, he didn't join a club till just before his 10th birthday and he was totally unknown (you can see all kids times on the ASA rankings and everybody knows who they have to beat - it's a bit scary). Oh how that changed when the boy started winning and beating kids who had been at the club since they were 6.
In fairness Ben was very good, he's a natural (his highest ranking was 6th in the UK for his 1500 free ), he was at the serious end, but at 11 you shouldn't have to deal with parents trying to psych you out before a race. Nothing is that serious.
He got sick when going through puberty and after 6 months of battling gave up. He didn't swim for a year but now joined our local club, which is small and friendly and he does 2 hours a week to keep his stroke and for fun and fitness. He hadn't raced for over a year and did a development gala a couple of months ago, just 50's. He went pretty quick on the fly and free and within a day we had messages from people we hadn't spoken to in 12 months who had seen he was back swimming again trying to find out what he was doing.