PUPILS should be allowed to opt out of football and athletics at school because professional sport is "drug-addled, corrupt, nationalistic, sectarian, sexist and homophobic", according to one of Scotland's most prominent Episcopalian clerics.

The Very Rev Kelvin Holdsworth, priest at the Scottish Episcopal Church, in Glasgow, accepted fitness was important for pupils, but said parents should be able to drop sports because they were a negative influence.

In an online blog he said: "The city I live in is blighted by sport-centred sectarianism and still the violence is encouraged by co-opting children at a very young age in school. Why do they make football compulsory for boys?

"How are decent parents supposed to keep their children from such negative and corrupting activities? You have a right to remove your children from religious instruction, but not from sport.

"I can see the point in teaching kids about heath and fitness, I can see the point of putting gyms in secondary schools and I can see the point of teaching all young people how to swim.

"But the competitive, money-dominated, cesspit of professional sport is surely the last thing we need to encourage them to believe is a proper activity for adults."

The Very Rev Holdsworth said he wanted boys and girls to learn that they were equal, but looked at men and women’s sporting rewards and "despaired".

He added: "It is drug-addled, corrupt, nationalistic, sectarian, sexist, homophobic and brings out the very worst in people. Why on earth do we presume it is something suitable for children to participate in?"