I played with friends in my or their garden, went to the park when a bit older. We were all the same, nobody played in the street. Like the above poster, my mother would have been mortified but it never occurred to me to suggest playing in the street because, well, no one did. We weren't wealthy or privileged in any way, just ordinary.
Why would someone be mortified about playing in the street if they weren't wealthy or privileged? What was there to be mortified about?
When going out and about in the car I would see children playing in streets, usually near blocks of flats, because they had no gardens. In such cases I think it was understandable, there was nowhere else outside for them to play.
You see that on television programmes, eg Call the Midwife, where many of the characters portrayed lived in flats. Children skipped, played games, football, etc. We did all that but in the garden or the park. It was really nice going to the park too, I loved it, rode my bike around it all the time. It was better than hanging about in the street.
I just don't see the difference between the park and the street, I'd consider any sort of playing outside in groups as equivalent. Some children ride their bikes around a cul de sac, you rode it around a park. What's the difference? The older generations I know mostly grew up in Welsh ex-mining terraces so their gardens were yards and backed on to each other. Children would go between houses and then go into the nearby woods and fields to play.
I can't see the correlation between kicking a ball against a wall and anti social behaviour. But then I live in a low crime area so would automatically link them.
School swimming pools certainly aren't the norm here either. There is one local secondary school with a swimming pool. There are no grammar schools in Wales, and there are no private schools in my county or my two neighbouring ones.