  This paper investigates the nature of institutional ties between a group of
English schools, including a large proportion of private schools that might be
thought of as contributing to the 'old boy network'. The analysis is based on a
network of bilaterally-determined school rugby union fixtures. The primary
importance of geographical proximity in the determination of these fixtures
supplies a spatial 'ground truth' against which the performance of models is
assessed. A Bayesian fitting of the latent position cluster model is found to
provide the best fit of the models examined. This is used to demonstrate a
variety of methods that together provide a consistent and nuanced
interpretation of the factors influencing community and edge formation in the
network. The influence of homophily in fees and the proportion of boarders is
identified as notable, with evidence that this is driven by a community of
schools having the highest proportion of boarders and charging the highest
fees, suggestive of the existence and nature of an 'old boy network' at an
institutional level.
