Athletics (British Sports Library)

CHAPTER I FOR PARENTS AND SCHOOLMASTERS UP to a few years ago athletics at our Public Schools were regarded merely as a "rag." No proper time was set aside for preparation, no tuition was available, and no one took any great amount of interest in the Cinderella among sports, which was regarded as fit only to fill in the fag-end of the second football term. The boy with a natural bent . for athletics, who went on from school to either Oxford or Cambridge, and turned out at Iffley Road or Fenner's, received a rude awakening and, for the first tiine, in all probability, learned that even the Oxford and Cambridge sports at Queen's Club are not the be-all and end-all of an athlete's career. Immediately after the war our Blues began to take a very active part in the wider field of public competitive · athletics, schoolboys began to seek instruction and to acquire technique, and inter– school matches, such as that between Harrow and Charterhouse, Eton and Lancing, came into fashion. In order that the young athlete, who would naturally dislike a sport confined merely to the old- 13