Many believe ‘Vent Football’ to be the least successful game in the history of the earth.
For six long years at the start of last century, an estimated hundred thousand school children were miserably dragged through their sorry paces as PE teachers around the globe attempted to popularise the sporting equivalent of a dead horse.
Headroom in the game, for a start, was nothing short of ridiculous. As small as some school freshman usually are (I once saw one able to fit inside his own rucksack!), no amount of compression was ever going to make them a good vent football player.
Then came the issue of access, which any former vent football player will tell you, is nothing like the movies!
Fresh air was usually in abundance, which did aid respiration throughout the game, but it was not enough for the health and safety officers who finally shut the door on the game when they discovered a match being played in their own offices – right above their very heads!
Nowadays, vent football has been swept so far under the carpets, even the most thoroughly researched and balanced history books make no mention of the sport. But it did exist…