Much of this book has focused on documenting the central role schools played in the growth and consolidation of sport in colonial Australia. In particular, it has argued that both football and cricket first emerged within schools before spreading to the wider community. At minimum, former students, ‘old boys’, who learned sports such as cricket and football in colonial schools, were heavily involved in their expansion beyond school grounds. By the 1880s, in all Australian colonies, the educational ideology termed ‘athleticism’ by scholars such as J.A. Mangan had been fully adopted by the independent boys’ schools sector, which was also expanding in number. This ideology had become so dominant that it began to attract criticism both from within the school system and from broader society.