Most pre-adolescent sports teams have a man in them. Or a woman. The early maturing child who is bigger, faster and more powerful than anyone else. Those teams that don’t have one are destined to a weekly diet of trauma at the hands of the teams that do.

The man-child is the enemy of competitiveness in children’s sport, typically up to about the age of 14, when maturity evens it all out and changes the landscape. Until then, the giant player enjoys undue advantage and dominates all before him. He scores five tries every week in a Rugby match...

Sport plays an important part in school reunions. Whether formal or informal, a gathering of people with their schooldays in common rarely omits reference to experiences on the playing fields. Although they are not universally positive – many are.

What do people value about their experience of sport at school? Which memories are sufficiently powerful to be etched on the mind, and to have survived years of intervening activity? And lasted far longer than the hastily collected facts that rammed reluctantly into the memory to facilitate exam passes?

Most involve a social dimension. “Playing with my mates” is...

It's the start of a new term. A new calendar of fixtures stretches ahead, and excitement surrounding the possibilities created by new seasons of football, hockey and netball. Various trophies await new winners, and life defining moments lie ahead for a fortunate few. For most, another programme of practices, matches, triumphs and disasters will provide material for more school magazine reports, and statistical records.

A lot of effort will be expended by coaches, and a lot of money spent, on fulfilling the programme. That is for certain. Other things are equally predictable as well....