Eton Wall Game

The Eton Wall Game, which originates from Eton College, is a vigorous form of football played on a strip of ground 5 metres wide and 110 metres long just beside a slightly curved brick wall (which was erected in 1717). The most important match is the annual St. Andrew's Day game, which is played between a team of "Collegers" (scholarship-holders) and a team of "Oppidans" (the rest of the students, who comprise most of the student body).

Each team tries to move the ball towards their opponent's end of the playing area. In those last few yards of the lengthy field (an area called the "calx" - which is Latin for chalk), a player can earn a "shy" (worth one point) by lifting the ball against the wall with his foot. A team mate then touches the ball with their hand and shouts "Got it!" Those two plays must be entirely within Calx. This also gives the scoring team the right to attempt a goal (worth nine points) by throwing the ball at a designated target (a garden door at one end of the field and a tree at the other end). A player may score a kicked goal, worth five points, if they kick the ball out in and it hits a goal during the normal course of play.

The process of getting the ball is arduous and a stalemate often ensues. This is because, in effect, the game consists of the two sets of players forming a scrum (called a "Bully") in which neither team may move the ball backwards (except in Calx, where a different type of Bully occurs).

The only fast way to make ground is by kicking the ball upfield and out of play - unlike most types of football play is restarted opposite where the ball stops after it had gone out, or was touched after it had gone out.

The game lasts up to an hour (30 mins per half); many games end 0-0. Scoring goals is very rare; the last goal in the St Andrew's Day game was in 1909, though there was a goal scored in a junior game in 2003. Other matches are played, and the average year will see six "shies" scored. In the 2002 St Andrew's Day match, the oppidans won 2-0, with Prince Harry, scoring one of the two shies.

The Wall Game is run almost entirely by boys, particularly by the Keepers of College Wall and Oppidan Wall. It is the former of these, Tom Lloyd, who currently is the most active in its organisation, as Keeper of College Wall, a position that has in the past been held by Boris Johnson, the politician. Despite its renown outside the school, in fact only a very small number of the 250 or so boys in each year ever take part in the sport, unlike the lesser-known but much more widely played Eton Field Game.

The first all-female Wall Game was played on July 15th 2005, by a group of lower sixth form students on a Summer School course at Eton. The final score was, alas, 0-0.

It has sometimes been claimed that the fictional game of Quidditch, played in the Harry Potter stories, was inspired by the Eton Wall Game.