FOOTBALL: Forward Passes Considered Ungentlemanly

From ‘Inverting The Pyramid’:

The dribbling game prevailed, largely because of Law Six, the forerunner of the offside law: ‘When a player has kicked the ball, anyone of the same side who is nearer to the opponent’s goal line is out of play, and may not touch the ball himself, nor in any way whatever prevent any other player from doing so, until he is in play…’ In other words, passes had to be either lateral or backwards; for Englishmen convinced that anything other than charging directly at a target was suspiciously subtle and unmanly, that would clearly never do…….
Even when Law Six was changed in 1866, following Eton’s convention and permitting a forward pass provided there were at least three members of the defensive team between the player and the opponent’s goal when the ball was played (that is, one more than the modern offside law), it seems to have made little difference to those brought up on the dribbling game.

CRICKET: Hitting the Ball to the Leg-Side Considered Ungentlemanly

Gideon Haigh:

As a schoolboy at Repton at the time, CB Fry was told that “if one hit the ball in an unexpected direction on the on side, intentionally or otherwise, one apologised to the bowler… The opposing captain never, by any chance, put a fieldsman there; he expected you to drive on the off side like a gentleman.”…..
as Monty Noble recalled: “When I first wielded a bat it was considered distinctly bad cricket to pull on the on-side, where there were no fieldsmen, a ball pitched outside the off stump or on the wicket. It had, forsooth, to be played in the regular and approved manner either straight or to the off-side where there were nine and often ten obliging fielders waiting to gather it in. The batsman was supposed to wait until the bowler lost his accuracy and direction and at length pitched one outside the leg stump before it was polite to dispatch it for four to where no fieldsman lurked.”