Football is a game for gentlemen played by ruffians, and rugby is just the opposite. That’s what I was taught at grammar school, and for 40 years I believed it. Soccer is for oiks, our teachers told us. Posh boys are no good at football. And so football-playing oiks like me were forced to play rugby, in an attempt to turn us into proper gentlemen.
Of course this was utter nonsense — a lot of Britain’s top public schools play football, and always have done. Yet this inverted snobbery prevails, which is ironic, because football in independent schools has never been in better shape. Having long been seen as the poor relations, many independent schools are now a match for the best football schools in the state sector. What has happened? How did this polite revolution come about?
Two years ago, I still hadn’t shaken off that old grammar school prejudice. My son Ed went to a local comprehensive, the Harefield Academy, where the football was excellent.
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