There was no sense of schadenfreude only sympathy but there was a desire to view my beaten bottom. I naturally complied and dropped my trousers so that the damage could be inspected. My classmated expressed a sense of shock at the state of my bottom although one or two implied that I deserved what I got.
The marks lasted for more than a week and my bottom was still sore the following day. Did I deserve it? Sadly the answer is probably because if the football had hit a boy’s head he could have been hospitalised whereas at least the part of my anatomy that had been punished soon recovered.