Thursday 23 August 2012

School sports...

Now that the Olympics are over and the fuss of the opening ceremony (which I for one was not sure about) has gone away, the excellent musical party at the close is complete, and the as yet undisclosed cost of the whole shenanigans (somewhere between a tenth and a quarter of this years NHS budget, dependent on which figure you believe), we can all sit back proud that Team GB didn’t let the side down.

Team GB won 65 medals, 29 of them gold. The medallists came from all over Britain, from all sorts of backgrounds but over a third (37%) of the medal winners were from private schools, which educate just 7% of the population. It seems that what we’ve always known about MPs is just as true for Olympic medallists – if you went or go to a public school you have a better chance of winning.

Of course there are lots of reasons for this. Many of the sports that we did well in are sports that are mainly for the toffs – sailing, fencing, equestrian, shooting and of course rowing. You don’t get many council house kids learning to fence or having their own show-jumping pony; they might learn to shoot, but generally on the streets or in the army.

As for the other reasons; well, the selling off of school playing fields hasn’t helped, kids playing on X-boxes and eating pizza, and a strange breed of ‘right-on’ teacher have been actively discouraging competition since the late seventies in state schools, so much so that it hardly exists in schools these days. Right-on.

When I was at school – an uncomfortable mix of public and grammar – competition was everything, encouraged, demanded. Run, jump, push, hit, X’s versus Y’s (our two form year groups), house versus house, boy versus boy, year versus year. Win or lose you had no choice but to compete on and off the playing field; and if you didn’t - well you endured the wrath and jibes of a succession of ex-army games masters… you ‘orrible boy.

At the time turning up at my weekly house meeting in the chem-lab and reporting on how many house points I’d scored to cheers or jeers, or running eight miles in the pouring rain whilst wading through a muddy stream in only shorts and your running vest on a winter’s morning, or getting kicked to shit in the scrum of yet another rugby practice on a Sunday afternoon, seemed so normal. It was just what you did. If you didn’t then you were a misfit, something to pick on, ‘out of school’ as the boarding boys termed it.

For those that couldn’t or wouldn’t do sport, well there was always a term in Coventry or death by radiator and toilet – your head flushed away then tied to a scalding radiator until you begged for mercy. All good character building stuff.

Fortunately whilst I hated PE, detested football and cricket, and didn’t have a tennis racquet, I was pretty good at rugby and never wimped out on the Moreton run, always crossing the torrent of the river by the rope rather than the bridge and getting a single House Point for the soaking.

Happy days, but I got by.

Here’s the thing; almost to a man the boarding house boys at our schools were good sportsmen and I remain convinced that it was because they were in a kind of prison. Whilst us day boys were home watching telly or down the pub drinking and meeting girls, they were spending their evenings in the nets, lifting weights in the gym, scrumming against the scrumming machine, playing squash. If my school was generally competitive, the boarding house boys were uber-competitive, even competing over who… actually I’ll leave that bit out.

I often wish I’d kept sport up after school. I enjoyed it most of the time and, unlike the inactivity I enjoy now, activity never did me any harm. But then as I often say: “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride” and my dad could never have afforded to buy me a pony.

10 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. I'm with you Sparks. Sports was actually a lot worse than I paint it and included various rituals that I really can't write about here.

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  2. Richard Shore commented on Facebook: "For me, it should only be in the olympics if it involves running or throwing something. Although after watching the taekwondo I did extend my definition to include violence. Proper violence, though, the kind you can get your nose broken in."

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  3. B. Kapral

    School days were the best and worst of times. I hated rounders, netball and swimming. I loved hockey, tennis and lacrosse. I was on the hockey team where we wore our 'tails' with pride - I did have a go at fencing but was probably too vicious, my nephew later became a national fencing champion. The school was split into 4 'houses' which you were allocated on the first day of your school life and therefore had an allegience throughout school. Mine was called Langridge, green team and we also had a points system for achievement. It created a sense of belonging and you wanted to do your best - to make your house the winners of everything. So what if you ended up on the losing house - you were all in it together. There were 300 pupils in the school and the headmistress knew every one of our names. Indeed even after leaving school if I met Miss Cooke on the street I would curtsey - out of respect, fear or habit. We regurlarly had things thrown at us in the classroom - blackboard dusters, books, chalk etc and we just thought it was the norm. Hey ho - happy days!

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  4. Joan Dixon on FB.
    Like women's boxing? (not sure how I feel about that, maybe no-one should be allowed to box?)

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    1. As with all things I wouldn't want to stop people doing anything that they felt they could succeed at - as long as they were aware of the consequences and it wasn't illegal. Sport is tough, people hurt themselves and others playing it - rugby is terribly physical, ballet dancing cripples the dancers, more people are killed or seriously injured riding horses than in formula 1 racing, mountain climbing, and the Isle of Man TT put together. Personally I don't like watching people box. Having been forced to box at school I know what pain and injury can be inflicted. But it isn't right to insist that other people don't do something just because we don't agree or like it. That is where governments are failing - they think that they can balance their books by taxing us on things that are harmful - salt, booze, cigarettes, fatty foods. If we follow that path then we end up allowing The Man to control our every moment. In the words of Ernest Hemmingway: "if you tolerate this then your children will be next". Let boxers box, smokers smoke and governments fall! Phew, that's better. Right I'm off to start a revolution - Viva El Andi!

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  5. Richard Shore on FB:
    Women should not be boxing, and to do so in the olympics sets a bad example. They should have sports more becoming of their talents, like ironing.

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  6. More Richard Shore on FB:
    If people are going to punch each other, I'd rather they did it in a boxing ring than the pub.

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    1. Dangerous that first one Number two.. hold hard my lad..

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  7. Richard Shore The great artists never consider their audience, they just create great art. I'm not saying I'm great, that's for other people to say, but if I were great, I'd say satirical things like that.


    Richard Shore Radio 5 spent the whole of the olympics talking about the womens football (hockey/volleyball) when the women were playing, but football (hockey volleyball) when the men were playing.


    Richard Shore See what I've done there? I've alienated my audience and then bang! turns out I'm right on after all. Just like a great artist.

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