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A Rough Guide to Fieldsports
All field sports basically follow the same pattern:
some people move a ball while others watch them doing it.
Here's a rough guide to distinguish the various disciplines
from another:
- If there are two teams kicking a round ball around a medium
sized lawn it's soccer.
- If the ball is a bit off-round, the teams look rather wild,
assemble in circles before kick off and shout maori war chants
to frighten the opposite team into surrender, it's rugby.
- If the players wear heavy body armour and the maori war chants
are replaced by a crowd of over excited teenagers bobbing around
on the side you're watching football.
- Unless all this is happening on ice, the ball is a disc and
the players use sticks to move the ball - then it's ice hockey.
- Drop the foul language, the aggression and substitute the
ice with a lawn again and you've got field hockey.
- If the players just seem to practice by throwing a ball to the
only player that could afford a club then it's baseball.
- Unless the players are all clad in white and the guy with the
club tries to hit a curious assembly of 5 wooden bits behind the
one throwing the ball - then it's cricket.
- If every player has got his own ball and more than one club
it's golf.
- If there is only one ball and it is shot rather gently through
a series of loops with a sort of long handled wooden mallet instead
of into a small hole in the ground, then it's croquet.
- Make the handles of the mallets a bit longer, skip the loops
and put the players onto horses: Polo.
- If ordinary Polo seems a wee bit fast-paced, and, frankly,
rather ordinary, exchange the horses with elephants and you get
Elephant Polo. Might be difficult to form a team in the Home
Counties, though.
- For people who can't afford elephants and a mallet, of
course there is always Cycle Ball, which is a bit like soccer
played indoors but with the players mounted on bicycles and
the rule that the ball must be moved by the wheels of the bicycles
(I'm not too firm regarding the rules here, maybe the odd touch
by the pedal is ok as well). Although this might not really be
considered a "field sport" due to its more indoor nature.
- To get back outdoors, and, of course, field sports: if the
target is furry, feathery or scaled, not even off-round, moves
very fast and is usually pursued by you (and you alone), then
we have finally reached the other definition of Field
Sports, i.e. hunting, fishing or shooting. But since that is
generally not regarded as a "spectator sport" we will
leave it as that.
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