Winchester College football

This was first played on the top of St. Catherine's Hill with a line of junior boys down each side to keep the ball from rolling away.

[2] Tatler quotes a pupil's description of it as "our combination of football and rugby, likened to an English bulldog playing with a ball".

[4] The aim of the game is to kick the ball (an over-inflated soccer football) into worms – the area at either end of canvas.

The players' roles are as follows:[10] Major matches are played between three teams, called Old Tutor's Houses (OTH), Commoners, and College.

OTH wear brown and white striped zephyrs (football shirts), and consist of pupils from Furley's, Toye's, Cook's, Chawker's, and Hopper's boarding houses.

Commoners wear red and white striped zephyrs, and consist of pupils from Kenny's, Freddie's, Phil's, Trant's, and Beloe's.

The game persisted with few rules, but required a long line of kickers-in, junior boys, on both sides of the pitch to keep the ball from rolling away down the hillsides.

[6][10] By about 1825, the rules had been standardised and matches with large teams of 22 players, 20 in the hot (scrum) and 2 behinds (backs) were played between College (the scholars resident in the school's medieval buildings) and Commoners.

[1][6][16] In 1941, General Archibald Wavell, an alumnus of Winchester (an Old Wykehamist), was congratulated by telegram for his success in pushing the Italian 10th Army back in North Africa with the words "hotting the enemy over worms" (pushing the hostile scrum back over the goal line).

[6] In 1996, another Old Wykehamist, John Whittingdale, speaking in Parliament in a debate on sport, said that "at school, I was forced to play a weekly game of fives, as well as a peculiarly brutal game known as Winchester College football, which normally resulted in substantial injuries to the participants.

A match between Commoners (red stripe) and Old Tutor's Houses (brown stripe) begins with a hot ( scrum ) on the halfway line. Supporters watch from behind ropes (rope with blue posts) and a safety net.
The Old Tutor's Houses team takes a kick from their goal line, worms, on Meads, with Chapel in the background.
The pitch or canvas for Winchester College Football, with the positions of the players for the 15-a-side game. The number of Kicks is reduced to 2 in games with fewer players.
Flint Court on Winkies Day: the classroom buildings are decked out with Commoners and Old Tutor's Houses zephyrs.
Winchester Winchester Cathedral Wolvesey Castle Winchester College Winchester College War Cloister River Itchen, Hampshire Ridding Meads St Catherine's Hill, Hampshire commons:File:Winchester College map.svg
Sketch map of Winchester College, with clickable links. The game was once played on St Catherine's Hill , and then on Meads (inside the college walls) or outside on fields including Ridding Meads and Kingsgate Park. All locations and building outlines are diagrammatic.