12:00a.m. 5th September 2008

| By Toby Walker

Sunshine Coast Grammar School parent Allan Brauer is annoyed that his son Jak, 13, has been told he can't go on a school rugby trip to Japan this month. Photo: Brett Wortman/178001

An angry father has called on Sunshine Coast Grammar School to explain why his son has been left out of his school rugby team’s trip to Japan later this month.

Alan Brauer said his son Jak had been devastated by a decision to leave him out of the travel plans, making him the only player in last weekend’s grand final winning Under-14 side to miss out.

Mr Brauer said his son, who has attended the private school all his schooling life, had met the criteria to make him eligible for the $1500 a head trip and could not understand how the school was unable to accommodate his son by finding an extra place for him in the 54-person touring party.

When he sought answers from the school, Mr Brauer said he was told by a staff member that it was because Jak had missed out on an off-season rugby camp during the Christmas holidays, which the 13-year-old had passed up on his dad’s advice so he could continue volunteering with the Mooloolaba Surf Life Saving Club.

“I said ‘you can’t do that to a young kid mate, it’s not professional sport, it’s under-14 rugby at school, you don’t have to train for 12 months’,” he said.

“He said ‘that shows the kind of dedication to rugby we want at the school’.

“There was no talk of Japan back then, it was just an off-season thing.”

Sunshine Coast Grammar headmaster Nigel Fairbairn declined to elaborate on the specific reasons Jak would be the one to miss out.

“Like any one of us, Alan is entitled to his view and his opinion and I have indicated to him on more than one occasion that obviously when you have to make a final decision that sometimes people are upset with the decision that is made,” he said.

Although Mr Brauer said he did not want to see another player cut to give his son a chance he was upset that his son seemed to be missing out due to a travelling capacity problem he believed could be easily solved with a few phone calls and emails.

But Mr Fairbairn said finding a spare place was logistically too difficult.

“We said right from the very beginning the size of the tour party would be 44 boys ... and we did look at the opportunity of seeing if it were possible to increase the size of the tour party and that was not possible,” he said.

Unlike his dad, Jak is reluctant make an issue of the decision, but his dad said he had decided to because he felt the school’s actions were fundamentally unfair and had not been backed by any valid reasons.

“He’s a good kid, loves rugby, lives for the team and has played in it for three years as well as being at that school since pre-school,” he said.

“He’s devastated because 22 of his mates are about to get on a plane to go on a trip they can’t stop talking about and he’s sitting there knowing he won’t be joining them.

“There are kids who have come into that team that have been at that school for six months.

“I just can’t cop it.”