Figure 1.--
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Figure 1.-- |
Sport in England is far more than a simple athletic activity. Cricket, for example, is a hallowed British tradition and matches are as much social events as athletic encounters. Schools located in' the country frequently have lovely grounds with beautifully tended shrubbery, surrounding immaculately kept cricket pitches. Matches are carefully arranged. Sometimes the process is more complicated than fixtures for a professional team. The schools are normally limited to local schools to avoid long drives. Headmasters want to play schools they feel are on the same social level. Rarely will they play state schools and if they do they will be carefully selected schools. As considerable prestige is associated with winning, the schools may avoid playing much larger schools and try to find, if possible, schools with which their children can compete on equitable terms. The matches are often looked forwarded to by both the boys and staff. The sportsmanship the boys are encouraged to show also shows up in the staff common room. As the rival masters sip the inevitable cup of tea or sociable sherry, and discuss their teams. The children also seem to enjoy the rivalry.
Sport in England is far more than a simple athletic activity. Cricket, for example, is a hallowed British tradition and matches are as much social events as athletic encounters. Schools located in' the country frequently have lovely grounds with beautifully tended shrubbery, surrounding immaculately kept cricket pitches. Parents often come to incourage their children, especially when the matches are heald on the weekend.
Matches are carefully arranged. Sometimes the process is more complicated than fixtures for a professional team. The schools are normally limited to local schools to avoid long drives. Headmasters want to play schools they feel are on the same social level. Rarely will they play state schools and if they do they will be carefully selected schools. As considerable prestige is associated with winning, the schools may avoid playing much larger schools and try to find, if possible, schools with which their children can compete on equitable terms. Smaller schools will usually lose to the larger schools because they have fewer pupils to draw on. Here there are many complications. If a small school beats a large school, it is embarassing for the larger school. In some cases, the inability to find a suitable local team, may result in quite lengthy trips in the school van to play a school of similar traditions and size. Often intense rivalries develop between neighboring schools. The rivalries are almost always good natured, between the teachers and students. Some rivalries are long standing, in some cases dating back to World War I or even earlier.
Games are not infrequently a sharp point of contention between schools. Sometimes large schools in the spirit of good sportmanship send the second team to play a smaller school. While visiting a school in Yorkshire with the reputation of fielding excellent sports teams, the headmaster told us about a colleague from a smaller school which called to arrange a match. The other headmaster told him that he had a very weak team and asked him not to send his best players so that the match wouldn't be lopsided. The games master duly obliged and his boys lost in a close game. The next week he read in the local newspaper that his school had lost to the much smaller one! The games master still refuses to play that school again.
Small schools face a particularly difficult dilema as regards games. One headmaster at a small school in Cumbria finds competing with larger schools in the area very difficcult. The sides he is able to field just could not compete with the larger schools they played. This disparity was particularly obvious in Rugby matches. One of the disadvantages of the prep school age group is that sometimes a few of the older boys have developed physically much more rapidly than the other boys. This can cause problems when the schools arrange matches, especially rugby matches. While we were there, their Rugby team returned from a thorough drubbing at the hands of a much bigger school. The headmaster did not want to end matches with other schools, as most of his boys planed to go to Public Schools where sports are quite important. We were impressed with how the headmaster handled the boys. He sat them down and gave them a real pep talk about how hard they played. "Forget the score boys, you gave your best against a much bigger side. I was really proud of you. " Although they really looked done in, none of the boys wanted to quit.
The matches are often looked forwarded to by both the boys and staff. The sportsmanship the boys are encouraged to show also shows up in the staff common room. As the rival masters sip the inevitable cup of tea or sociable sherry, and discuss their teams. The children also seem to enjoy the rivalry. Often when finding that we are visiting a rival school, the boys will ask us to pass on their good natured banter about the upcoming "massacre." One group of eager rugby players in Kent were initially sure they were going to win an upcoming rugby match . We couldn't help but tease the boys about a rather big new player at the nearby school which they were to play the next day. "Is he really that big?" asked Brian, a smallish boy concerned about facing him in the inevitable scrum.
