The league of gentlemen

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. He also played for Watford FC, from eight through to 16. A bout of meningitis knocked him back and Watford released him a year later, but they kindly put us on to Bradfield College, which was offering sixth-form scholarships to boys from professional clubs who’d been let go.

Ed passed the academic test and did well in the interview. He had some interest from other clubs, but decided on Bradfield. I was pleased for him, but I assumed his chances of playing professional football were over. How could he compete with all the 16-year-olds who’d left school to become full-time apprentices at professional clubs? However this summer he left Bradfield, after sitting three A-levels, to begin a pro contract at Burnley.