I am not a native speaker FWIW but "upper" is exactly what I wanted to say. My point was that if you replace football with golf and working class with upper class the whole idea of cultivating interest in sport to fit with some social group starts to sound really cheesy. And that author's "noble" intent is a fig leaf on what sounds like a rather pointless exercise to me. Although I cannot pinpoint exactly why.

(btw, I am not the one who downvoted you. HN got really trigger-happy lately)