Oh, great gods of topiarised hedges, spare me. The old boys are back in town and this time they’ve brought their clipboards.

For those who were occupied with more pressing matters at the end of last week, the news that Newington College’s former students are escalating their fight against the school becoming co-ed is likely to have been missed in the sequin-strewn aftermath of Planet Taylor hitting Sydney.

Newington old boys protest about the Stanmore school going co-ed from 2028.Credit: Kate Geraghty

Lean in, leather patch-wearing enthusiasts, and I’ll catch you up quickly.

Newington made the announcement at the end of last year, and since then, a bunch of dissidents – presumably from the graduating class of 1863 – have been railing against the prospect of the college admitting students with scary lady parts. You might’ve seen them on TV a few weeks ago, giving orotund, occasionally discursive speeches about the school’s proud tradition of producing upstanding manly men and sobbing fulsomely about the educational implications for their (not technically born yet, but still) grandsons.

Last week, current Newington parents – including me – were told that a “discrete group” of alumni would force a special general meeting of the school’s old boys union, where they would attempt to pass votes of no confidence in the school’s head and council.

Man up, generals, it’s pincer movement by point of order. A separate legal challenge, supported by a group with the understated and not at all melodramatic name of Save Newington College, has also been launched.

Students entering Newington College, which will soon accept female students.Credit: Kate Geraghty

Their opposition to the school moving to a co-ed model is laid out in painstaking, typically hyperbolic detail on their website, but their position is encapsulated by their assertion that going co-ed will create a “seismic shift in this extraordinary school [and] destroy the great traditions and heritage that make Newington College the greatest school for boys in Australia”.

Central to their case for continued male sovereignty is the contention that the top brass only formally consulted about 400 people, leaving a minimum of 9600 old boys, snifters in hand, waiting forlornly by the fireplaces for their chance to tee off.