Mischievous students have been banned from sticking strips of glue to their football boots to give them the edge over opponents.

Youngsters at The Chafford School, Lambs Lane South, Rainham, had been using brightly-coloured rubbery tape Sugru to improve their performances in a trend that took the school by storm.

The glue is said to allow better control of the ball and more power and swerve when shooting. But teachers wised up to their antics and have now given the substance the red card.

Matthew Goodman, director of sport at the school, said: “This latest trend for using Sugru to enhance their football boots and give their football skills a boost has taken the school by storm.

“They’ve even been using different colours to customise their boots to match their favourite team colours. While we applaud their ingenuity and creativity, we have now had to enforce a ban on these Sugru-enhanced boots, as it was no longer fair on the other players.”

Jane Ni Dhulchaointigh, Sugru’s inventor and CEO, believes the “creativity and initiative” shown by the students should be celebrated, not punished.

She said: “Sugru has thousands of different uses, but this was definitely a new one to us. We love seeing the inventiveness of our customers of all ages when using Sugru, especially young people.

“We believe the trend for enhancing football and rugby boots with Sugru demonstrates that young people have a lot of untapped creativity and invention.

“It’s a shame the school has needed to ban the boots from competitive games – and we really hope they don’t categorise creativity as misbehaviour... When in fact this is a really clever and innovative use of the product!”

The ban follows the news this week that the FA is banning the publication of youth football results to avoid youngsters getting upset.