School rugby is brutal, but banning it would be ridiculous

Football, we were told on the first day at big school, is played with an oval ball.

That game with the round ball is called soccer, and it is not a game for real men.

This was not in America, but in that slightly foreign part of Britain that is the private school system.

I had been in state education until the age of 11, and the two worlds were very different.

Sport at my junior school mostly involved running around a field – possibly chasing a ball, maybe passing a baton – with no real focus.

There would be a member of staff watching, but his main job was to prevent escaping and …