Tonbridge School - Sport

Sport

The school has a strong sporting tradition, especially in rugby and cricket, with many other sports played as well. Traditional public school sports like rugby fives and fencing are played to high standards, as well as more modern sports including football, climbing, squash, and tennis. The school has two of only 22 rackets courts in the country (only fourteen schools have them; the first at Tonbridge was built in 1897), and has seven fives courts; four are standard Rugby Fives courts whilst the other three are Winchester Fives courts.

Until 1869, Tonbridge had its own distinctive variant of football, which was played with thirteen players per side, with various eccentric rules, which was described by those who played it as a "ferocious" and "dirty" game. In 1869, the school discussed whether to adopt the Harrow, the Rugby, or the Association rules for football, and within two years the decision had been made to adopt the Rugby variant; Rugby Union rules and Football Association rules were rapidly overtaking local customs all over the country at this point, as the public schools started to play against each other as opposed to only playing internal matches.

Tonbridge's 1st XV rugby team was undefeated for 3 straight seasons (2004/5, 2005/6 and 2006/7), and is the only public school 1st XV since the Second World War to have two unbeaten seasons in a row, let alone three. The 1st XI Hockey team was unbeaten in its regular fixtures in the 2006/7 and 2008/09 season, while the Athletics squad has enjoyed two consecutive unbeaten seasons - 2005/6 and 2006/7.

The school has produced a number of international rugby players throughout the history of rugby union. In 1871, in the first ever international rugby match, Tonbridge was represented by two players, J.E. Bentley and J.H. Luscombe. These players were also members of a team called the Gipsies Football Club, a London-based rugby football club for Old Tonbrigians founded in 1868. This club produced four other internationals including England captain Francis Luscombe, and was also one of the founding members of the Rugby Football Union.

With the opening of the Tonbridge School Centre for Sports and Media in summer 2008, the school gained the most expensive school sports centre in the UK. The centre was opened by Sebastian Coe in front of a crowd of thousands. The new centre contains a 25-metre swimming pool, a gym, a climbing wall, a sports hall suited for badminton, indoor football, cricket nets practice or basketball, and a fully equipped, high-tech media centre.