To polish leaders, Eddie

of Cowley in St Helen’s, St Edward’s Liverpool, Normanton GS in Wakefield, St Brendan’s, Bristol were powerhouse rugby ‘academies’ to use a modern phrase. A few still bravely fly the state school flag, not least Northampton School for Boys where the current England skipper Courtney Lawes was a pupil but they are the exception.

In sporting terms grammar schools were the ultimate levelling up instrument. At my grammar school – Reigate – we were packed full of tough housing estate lads from Redhill, Woodhatch, Merstham and even less salubrious parts of Purley. I was the son of an Irish immigrant – a door to door salesman or tinker as they are less generously called – on the distant Surrey-Sussex border. The majority of us were lower middle class at very best with perhaps 30 per cent of the school community being in the traditional home counties middle class bracket. Not so middle class however that they could afford to send little Jonny to even a minor public school.

It was frankly hilarious when tough nut schools from Wales, the west country or Lancashire or highly touted touring sides from abroad arrived expecting to beat up the toffs from leafy Reigate and were sent home packing, absolutely battered black and blue and buried under an avalanche of tries.

We spent our lives either in the classroom or in sports kit – sometimes both – and, yes, it was a fight to get recognition. We were allowed to play – and beat – Dulwich School up until the fifth form but the fixtures abruptly stopped there. We weren’t considered suitable First XV opponents.

We played mighty Millfield at senior level three years in a row, narrowly beating them on all three occasions, didn’t concede a single point in the process and then they dropped us. The official reason from memory is that our doughnuts and mugs of tea afterwards was not considered sufficient post-match fare. It was all we could afford, and we paid for them ourselves!

Reigate and great rivals like Hampton, Emanuel and RGS Guildford reinvented themselves as fee paying schools when the axe fell but many others alas fell by the wayside.

But absolutely none of this is any fault of the public schools who remain beacons of rugby excellence. They do what they do and have always done over the decades and centuries. England rugby, and indeed the other home unions, would be in a sorry state without the phenomenal rugby cultures of Millfield, Sedbergh, Whitgift, Brighton College, Dulwich College, Wellington College (Berks), Oakham, Clifton College, Harrow, Cranleigh, Durham, Epsom and countless others. Their facilities and coaching staff are second to none, their pupils train and play like apprentice professionals.

And remember every year there will be a sixth form intake at such schools of ambitious rugby players from state schools on sports scholarships. Such scholarships are a passport to a sporting career and possibly a better life and those who benefit will be hungry independently-minded sixth formers in a rush to make an impact. Nobody’s fools. They don’t fit Eddie’s stereotyping for one second. Kyle Sinckler for example attended Graveney school in Tooting, learned his rugby mainly at Battersea Ironsides and then got scouted by Epsom College and offered a sixth form place. Well played him.

The largely public school’s circuit is hugely competitive, it’s not a bed of roses, and you learn how to win. There are prestigious National Cups to win, the Rosslyn Park National Schools Sevens and inter schools Festivals and Tens competitions and these school sides are often run like clubs. Elected officers, regular team meetings when the players take the lead, daily training, tours to arrange, fundraisers to organise. It’s full on.

Yes, the opportunities are great – enviable even – but the pressure is considerable. A school’s reputation, its position in the market, can depend on its continuing sporting prowess and Premiership clubs are monitoring your every game with an eye to offering you a contract. All this and A levels too. Those who can hack it – allocate their time, make good decisions, stay focussed – very quickly identify themselves. The sifting process that is part of elite sport begins right there.

The most baffling of Eddie’s assertions is that public school teams do not encourage leaders. Really? It didn’t hamper Grand Slam-winning skippers such Will Carling and Wavell Wakefield (both Sedbergh), Ronald Cove-Smith (Merchant Taylors’ School), Bill Beaumont (Ellesmere College) or indeed Owen Farrell (St George’s, Harpenden).

It doesn’t guarantee you will be a natural leader of men but such is life. Eton has produced many great leaders and politicians and a handful, recently, of complete halfwits and chancers. In sport though leaders inexorably identify themselves – state sector or public school – and the job of a world class coach is to back and polish those leaders. Concentrate on that, Eddie.

“We spent our lives in a classroom or in sports kit”