Like several other bloggers I had an e-mail today from streetgames, a charity trying to encourage and enable more youngsters to take up sport, asking if I would mention them, their pamphlet, and an article in today’s Observer mentioning them.

As it seems like a good cause, I suppose I should. The type of events they are trying to organise can only do good, although I am sceptical that they will acheive their aims.

The e-mail mentions that children from the lower classes are less likely to get involved in organised sports and illustrate this by saying that the lowest 20% are half as likely to be involved in a sports than the highest 20% and the top 20% are 4 times as likely to reach the elite in a ‘basket of sports’ as the lowest 20%.

I am assuming that they are using income to determine what the top and bottom 20% are.

So the implied aim is to see more equality so that children at the bottom of the class/income structure are as successful in sports. The obstacle to this is hinted at in the definition of this ‘basket of sports’ – it excludes football and boxing. Football and boxing are, of course, the two more working class sports and also the most lucrative (in the UK) if you are successful.

At school the more sporty children tend to be better than everyone else at most sports. They are fitter, stronger, with better co-ordination, and could probably do well in several sports if they chose to concentrate on them. Is it any surprise that they will tend to decide to concentrate on football?

If your family do not have a lot of money and you do not have great prospects for a career, would your ambitions lie with football, where it is possible to make a living at the League 3 level and do very well at higher levels, or with rugby? Sports which involve a lot of expensive equipment and specialist facilities would not even be a consideration.

A lad from the local sink estate would not even be able to consider taking up golf, F1 racing, ski-jumping, rowing or show jumping. Tennis, badminton, swimming or running are more within reach, but the schoolchildren who are good at them will often also be good at football.

The other barrier to success in many sports is that the middle classes are taught not to take risks. Get a solid career foundation to fall back on. They will be more likely to be encouraged into tennis or golf, and more likely to be able to afford show jumping.

Lets face it, the only way you will see the bottom 20% doing as well in, for example, table tennis, as the top 20% is if the distance between the top and bottom 20% is reduced considerably. What inequalities there are in sport only reflect the inequalities in our society and no number of well-meaning organisations are going to significantly change that.

But even if they manage to get a few Playstation-addicted couch potatoes to get involved in inter-estate sports days they will be doing something beneficial, so good luck to them.