OH CLUBS AND SOCIETIES

There are numerous OH clubs and societies in a variety of social, sporting and professional categories. Contact the club secretaries below if you would like to find out more about any of these OH clubs and societies. You can also visit the Groups section of OH Connect for dedicated OH clubs and society forums.

Oh Clubs And Societies Contact Details

Harrow Aviation Club JB Steel (Rendalls 1967³ Harrow Football Club LA Kunzig (Druries 1983³ Harrow Wanderers JR Gillions (Elmfield 1987³

Adventurers Club RM Portal (Elmfield 1981²

Association Football Club K Pittalis (Rendalls 2006³

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Entrepeneurs & Investors Club

Eton Fives Club

Taylor (Elmfield 1993³

Dunbar (Former Harrow Master)

Fencing Club AE Webb (Druries 1989³

Golfing Society WA North (The Knoll 1962²

Horse Racing Club AP Rogers (Elmfield 1984³

Law Society Pierre Ali-Noor (

Lawn Tennis Club

Lodge

Scott (Tennis Coach, 1988-2000

Skeggs (The Head Masters 1997³

1999³

Wallace (Bradbys 2000³

Sessions (Rendalls 1968³

Houslander (

Real Tennis and Rackets Association

Boralessa (Moretons 1983³

Holtby (

Shaftesbury Enterprise Society

Dalton (Newlands 1992³

Masuda (Rendalls 2011³

Hedley (West Acre 2008³

Gray (The Head Master's 1999²

Byronics

Smith (The Park 2002³

Since leaving Harrow, Will Perry has had a front seat calling the game he loves. Two decades, three Olympics and thousands of matches later, he reflects on how sports journalism has changed – from social media to podcasting.

FOR WILL PERRY (The Head Master’s 1997 3), football seemed inevitable. Skipping lessons to play Football Manager, picking a university for its proximity to Manchester City at Maine Road, and a legendary footballing godfather have all led him to decades of success as a broadcast journalist covering the beautiful game.

But long before stints with Sky, BBC and BT Sport, Perry imagined a different career – behind the camera. “When I was 14 or 15, I had an uncle who was a line producer in the film industry,” he remembers. “I worked as a runner on a lot of film sets as a kid and was immersed in that world.”

With his sights set on the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield, Perry worked everywhere from Wembley to PyeongChang, but his most memorable set was St Thomas Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, New York City.

“I was obsessed with J.D. Salinger and fell into this Catcher in the Rye life 100 years on,” he said. The Hollywood life came with its share of glamour and mundanity: in the same shoot Sigourney Weaver would introduce Perry to New York’s nightlife.

(“my fake ID I bought at Harrow didn’t cut it” he laughed), and David Frost would lose his patience over a doughnut (“he honestly called me a c-bomb for getting the wrong one!”).

But even with the highs and lows of show business, Perry’s obsession with football ran deeper.

“I was always football mad. You’ve got to think: when I was at prep school, that was around the time the Premier League started,” he said. “So, when I came to Harrow it was only four years old. It was just – you were either into it or you weren’t, and I was just obsessed.”

Harrow’s history with football goes back to Charles Alcock (Druries 18553), who in 1859, on leaving Harrow, founded Forest Football Club with his elder brother and a few Old Harrovian friends. Forest would become Wanderers FC, a dominant but ragtag team playing different matches under different rule sets and always without a home stadium. Alcock himself would go on to found the first ever FA Cup final in 1872, and win it as captain of a predominantly OH Wanderers team, before captaining England on six occasions. The FA unveiled a plaque commemorating Alcock’s contribution to the game at the Sunley last year, the 150th anniversary of his 1872 win.

But Perry doesn’t remember much football fever from his time on the Hill. “Harrow was a very big rugby school; it wasn’t a massive football school,” he said, “so there weren’t many people like me who were just obsessed with the Premier League.” Instead he found his inspiration from a few enthusiastic beaks and connections outside the school. His godfather, Frances Lee, played with the likes of Colin Bell and Mike Summerbee in a legendary 1970s Manchester City team and was Chairman of the club when Perry joined Harrow.

“But when I was at Harrow they were awful. In the 97/98 season, we went down to the third tier of English football and nearly went bust. It was a very different Manchester City from what it is now.

Aged 17, in between driving lessons and AS-levels, Perry wrote a letter to Kelvin MacKenzie – remembered now as The Sun’s Editor in Chief during the Hillsborough crisis, but then at the helm of talkSPORT. Soon he was spending his summer taking the train from Marlow to the station’s broadcast tower in Waterloo.

“I was making tea for everyone, you know, as you always start out,” he said. “But those years for me were so useful.”

Too busy playing Championship Manager (now Football Manager) to do justice to his A-levels, Perry applied to Manchester Metropolitan University. “I wanted to be in Manchester because – it sounds so pathetic – because of City,” he said. “I wanted to be able to go to the games.”

The degree didn’t stick – Perry dropped out after a year – but the city did: “I haven't left Manchester since,” he said. And while Perry sensed a little disappointment from his family, he decided to work instead for KEY103. “Two years of being submerged in that world of broadcasting, actually on the ground floor in the trenches, was far more important and far more valuable than getting a degree,” he knows now.

At the time, Perry took advantage of a feud between Sir Alex Ferguson and the BBC to get an exclusive for his local Manchester Station. Soon he was sitting down with managers from Sam Allardyce to Mark Hughes and, after just over a year, joined BBC Manchester.

“It was an exciting time because you could see a pathway,” he said. “I knew if I committed myself and applied myself in that industry that I could climb up.”

“For me, now (sounding like an old fogey), we live in a cut-corner culture. Particularly with the rise of social media, anyone can claim to be a presenter because they can string some things together on YouTube,” he said, “whereas when I was 17, 18, 19 you had to start at the bottom.”

To begin with, that meant covering away games where his salary didn’t exceed travel expenses, even working for the BBC. “But you’d never turn it down because it was such a big opportunity,” he said. “That’s where you learn and fine tune and hone your craft.”

Since then, Perry’s career has grown with the BBC and expanded to other sports, from boxing and cricket to rugby league. For him, the years of pre-game research and underpaid match-day travelling came good when he arrived at “the big, bright lights of Television” working for Radio 5 Live.

For a long time, he remembers, “I was a one-man band with a drum on my back and a xylophone and everything. There [at 5 Live] it’s like, right, everything for you: they’d print out your script, bring you to the studio –it was amazing.”

Perry’s time since hasn’t been without disappointments, including being snubbed once to present Saturday night Match of the Day – a privilege which remains one of his greatest career aspirations.

But across sports, continents and stations, Perry’s career as a journalist and broadcaster has, he said, been fuelled by confidence, not arrogance, and hard work. He exercised both at Harrow, but sometimes hard work comes easily when you’re football mad.

"With not many football obsessed friends during my time on the Hill I often shared my enthusiasm for the game with my maths teacher Dr Bill Dalton who I have wonderful memories of. He was a huge Accrington Stanley fan, 'who are they?!' I hated maths but would relish the ten minute debrief where we would dissect our two teams misfortunes from the weekend.”

“One of my big inspirations at Harrow was David Elleray,” then Druries House Master (1991 – 2009) who moonlit as a Premier League referee," said Perry. He can still remember watching Elleray sending Roy Keane off at the infamous 2001 Manchester Derby, and the attention a sports celebrity brought to the Hill. “It's bizarre that you had people from the public coming up knowing where he lived and shouting abuse at his door and all that sort of stuff.”

More than anything, though, Perry remembers the time they spent together, furrowed in match analysis. “I’d get all the papers, go round and knock on his door and, while he was in his office marking, we’d sit there for hours just talking through all yesterday's games,” said Perry. “I had so much respect for him. I don’t know if you can idolise a referee but just that world that he was in.”

For now, Perry is still running between games –and looking forward to his next gig at Sky Sports with whom he made his debut in early June. Then, like back at school, it’s off for the Summer until next season kicks off in August.

Author, philanthropist, investor and one of the youngest entrepreneurs ever to found a bank, 24-year-old Toni Fola-Alade is learning to pace himself as he races to the future.