The traditional and most important match of the year is played on Saint Andrew's Day, as the Collegers (King's Scholars) take on the Oppidans (the rest of the school).

The wall game is also played on Ascension Day, immediately after a 6 a.m. service on the roof of College Chapel.

[2] Various scratch matches are also played throughout the Michaelmas and Lent halves (terms), where boys from different year groups, as well as masters, take part.

[3] A possible early reference to the wall game occurs in the anonymously-published reminiscences of Henry John Blake (born 1791).

[5] A letter from March 1821 states "there is a wall ... against which they play Foot-ball in the season; indeed they say it is capital weather for it now, but it is not the fashionable game, so nobody dares to propose it.

Players within the Bully shove and push each other, mostly with their bodies but also by placing their fists against the faces of the opposition and attempting to lever them backwards and away from the Wall.

This consists of a tunnel (coming out from the wall, diagonally forward from the position of the ball) of players from one team who are crouching on hands and feet next to each other.

[citation needed] The First World War flying ace Arthur Rhys Davids also played, representing College with Ralph Dominic Gamble in 1915.

[citation needed] There are organised sessions on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the Lent half, by the Master in Charge.

Members of the College Wall also annually commemorate the outstanding player and Keeper of the Wall Logie Leggatt, who was killed in the First World War at the age of 22, making a toast at each year's Christmas Sock Supper with the words in piam memoriam L.C.L (in affectionate memory of L.C.L).

Despite its renown outside the school, only a very small number of the 250 or so boys in each year group ever take part in the sport, unlike the lesser-known but much more widely played Eton field game.

The object of the game is to throw balls in a "Topmiler", a wicker basket on top of a leather flying helmet.

In Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, the Ankh-Morpork Assassins' Guild has a far more sadistic variant of the "Wall Game", and is essentially an extreme hybrid of rock-climbing and dodgeball.