Rare/Uncommon/Regional Sports

[cableguy]

after a few discussions, i decided to create a thread for sports/games that one part of the world may have, but the rest of the world is unaware of...

this can be a place where outdoor games, lumberjacking, gaelic football, aussie rules football, rugby, cricket, horseshoes, or whatever other sport/game that the rest of the world may not know much about or even be aware of at all...

please leave f1 racing, soccer, American football, basketball, baseball, and hockey to the threads that already exist, or create a new one...

during a trip to Ireland, i learned of something called gaelic football... it is a hybrid game combining soccer and aussie rules football, and perhaps some other elements as well... though i hate soccer, i found this game to be quite entertaining and easy to follow...

same trip, i also watched my first full game of aussie rules football... i had seen snippets before, but never a complete game... again, very entertaning, though i am still confused about some of the rules and scoring...

sadly, neither of these is available much, if at all, in the US currently... :(

[The Chief]

How many of you know rink hockey? These four countries basically dominate the sport, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Argentina, the others just make up the numbers. The next world championship will be held in San Jose in August. I'm not really into it, I'm just mentioning it because it's the only sport Portugal can win at :lol:

Couple a links,
http://www.inf.fh-dortmund.de/rollhockey/CIRH_Haupt.htm International ruling body
http://en.cerh.info/index.php European comitee

[Gibson]

Has anyone played Calvinball? It's really fun, but kind of hard to set up, and the rules take a while to explain.

[moxdevil]

Whats that really gay-looking sport that has people running around in semi-gridiron gear throwing balls via a net on the end of a stick at a net. Seen it in some films like American Pie, craziest and gayest shit i have ever seen. :mrgreen:

[cableguy]

mox, i believe you are referring to lacrosse... a game that recently started a pro league here in the States, and that draws about the same number of people as a soccer game here... somewhat fun to watch, but you could fit the crowd into a beach ball...

[Zinista]

Whats that really gay-looking sport that has people running around in semi-gridiron gear throwing balls via a net on the end of a stick at a net. Seen it in some films like American Pie, craziest and gayest shit i have ever seen. :mrgreen:
Where's Scottbritt to bite at that one when you need him! lol

Anyways Aussie Rules is very popular down here at the moment, the only thing its lacking is international exposure/competion.. Like Cable said, the Gaelic football guys play the Aussie Rules guys in a 3 game series anually but thats about it... I do believe the AFL (Australian Football League) have had exhibition games in the US aswell as Japan or China..

[tima]

same trip, i also watched my first full game of aussie rules football... i had seen snippets before, but never a complete game... again, very entertaning, though i am still confused about some of the rules and scoring...

sadly, neither of these is available much, if at all, in the US currently... :(

Aussie Rules (AFL) is easily the best spectator sport in my opinion, and easily one of the most brutal. I am a biased Aussie though, but I have watched and enjoy many of the main sports from around the world.

check out this page - it has all the best goals and marks from each week, and the eventual winners for goal and mark of the year for 2004
http://afl.com.au/default.asp?pg=motygoty04
(especially check rounds 11 for marks)

Speaking of Aussie Rules...
Did anyone else see Nathan Brown's injury a few weeks back, man that's gotta be up there for the most sickening I've seen in a major sport.
There's 2 videos of it at the following link, but be warned it's not for the squeamish, these videos don't show worst camera angles captured which were a more side-on angle where you can see his leg bend 90 degrees, or the after shot when the opposition player gets up - those two angles were really hard too watch...
http://www.injuryupdate.com.au/subscribers/
(you need to register at the forum, but it's free and doesn't need email activation)

There's always a shitload of injures pretty much every weekend in afl, but the most exciting parts are the marks and goals. I got a dvd of Gary Ablett (who was IMO and many others, the best player ever) - its available to buy online - he's got some pretty amazing highlights.

=EDIT=
Found a couple of pics - sorry about the GettyImages waterwark - I'm a member, but they wont disappear.

Mark of the year 2004:
http://img9.imagevenue.com/loc252/th_549_50816125.jpg (http://img9.imagevenue.com/img.php?loc=loc252&image=549_50816125.jpg)

Should have been mark of the year 2004:
http://img36.imagevenue.com/loc27/th_31e_50930493.jpg (http://img36.imagevenue.com/img.php?loc=loc27&image=31e_50930493.jpg) http://img33.imagevenue.com/loc4/th_775_50930522.jpg (http://img33.imagevenue.com/img.php?loc=loc4&image=775_50930522.jpg)
(this player ran from where the ball was kicked with his back to the ball before jumping - if you're wondering how he got in that position)

[Zinista]

I saw the pics of the injury to Nathan Brown and it was pretty brutal...

Anyone else have any other sports in mind??

[Ankit Pande]

Kabaddi

I have seen this game being played in the Indian Subcontinent ..... the game includes 2 teams of 20 or less and each team has its court with a central line. One player from one of the teams crosses the line and goes in and has to touch one fo the players and run back to the court. If he touches one of his opponents, the "opponent" team has to restrain the guy, prevent him from crossing the line ... more of wrestle him and restrain him. This all has to be done by the person in one breath, if he loses breath he has to return. And if he loses breath after being caught he is out of the game and the opponents send their player into the other team.

Returning safely to your own court after touching the opponentm, one of the "out" players comes back.

So u win the game after u lose all of your players or lose a certain number of players.


I loved this game ... u get to wrestle and u play it on mud .... it is a wild game.
:D

[Zinista]

^^^^^^^^^^^^ Yeah I've seen it before on ESPN... It's definitely a wild game, not too dissimilar to Dodge Ball really with the idea of out players being able to come back again..

[Ankit Pande]

Its a really old game ... probably played even before dodge ball existed ... and its the main game for police officers in the Indian Subcontinent.

Some people are trying to get Kabaddi to be an Olympic game .... we might see it maybe in the next few years.

[tima]

Not a weird game, but what about Netball, or especially Mixed Netball. Netball is the most played team sport in Australia - it hardly rates on TV though. I don't know of a national/international mixed netball comp, but Mixed Netball is very popular with amateur or non-sports people. It's a lot of fun to play too - though more boring when watching. At the top level or international level, Womans Netball is popular in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, West Indies and others I can't remember, it's played in the Commonwealth Games (Women's Netball only), so probably the same countries as Cricket. Men's netball however is the opposite, my brother played men's netball for our state - the players had to pay for everything (including interstate travel). Netball can be extremely quick - quicker than Basketball, especially Men's Netball cos they can't dribble, but they don't stop to throw the ball either like the netball you normally or used to see.
It's good to be able to play a sport with girls too ;)

[Zinista]

I filled in on a social work team and I hated every second I was on the court!! lol I think it was because I'm used to a bit of physical contact like on the soccer field and I was getting pinned by the netball umpire for contact every 20 seconds! Never again!

[cableguy]

what is this thing you call netball??? :)

[moxdevil]

what is this thing you call netball??? :)

A game very similar to basketball, only its played by girls and Australians. ;) All participants wear a skirt (including Australian men) :fag: , are not allowed to travel with the ball, and have set positions.

[Zinista]

The English try and play the game too but the men get pissed off because they have to wear skirts that are regulation size and not the mini's they wear at home... :D

[moxdevil]

The English try and play the game too but the men get pissed off because they have to wear skirts that are regulation size and not the mini's they wear at home... :D

hahaha wondered how long it would take for a reply. :lol: Tell you what though those mini's don't half chafe. :fag:

[joeramdom]

Rugby league (not to be confused with Rugby) is huge in the Eastern states of Australia. its by far the most popular winter sport in new south wales and queensland. its also popular in england, new zealand, france and all the pacific countries (its actually the national sport in papua new guinea)
its a little bit like american football in that the aim is to get the ball over the line at the other end of the field but apart from that its very different.
They dont wear padding like in gridiron so it gets pretty brutal sometimes and there are a lot of injuries but its hugely entertaining.

Anyone interested in watching a game can by going to:

http://www.nrl.com/bigpond/video.cfm

i reccommend watching one of the recent state of origin games (New South Wales vs Queensland). its by far the highest standard rugby league game anywhere in the world. its kinda like the equivalent of superbowl in terms of publicity, at least within the 2 states involved.

[mindido]

I'm gonna have to gloat a bit here. My alma mater just won the National Concrete Canoe Race for the third year in a row. I actually helped with this project a few years ago but that was the first year the University became involved.

https://www.asce.org/inside/nccc2005/winners.cfm

Way to go Badgers!

[cableguy]

i saw that televised on espn or discovery... not sure which... it was a couple years back, but quite a hoot... :)

does anyone know if the afl has any web simulcast available??? it seems to be about the only way i can think of to watch more than a week in review... i would much rather watch an entire game... thanks in advance for any help anyone can provide...

[Zinista]

Try the Official site mate:

http://www.afl.com.au/

**I noticed that there's an "international Fans" section.. You may be able to get simulcasts from there..

[cableguy]

thanks... i was mining that site, but came up with nada... :(

[tima]

A game very similar to basketball, only its played by girls and Australians. ;) All participants wear a skirt (including Australian men) :fag: , are not allowed to travel with the ball, and have set positions.

LOL, I shoulda seen that coming. :D

I filled in on a social work team and I hated every second I was on the court!! lol I think it was because I'm used to a bit of physical contact like on the soccer field and I was getting pinned by the netball umpire for contact every 20 seconds! Never again!

I used to play contact sport too (amateur AFL). It can get rough in Netball though - I saw a woman bust her leg, and a teammate broke her ankle a few weeks ago - another guy died once in the game prior to mine. When I played Men's Netball, another guy in my team got lifted up off the ground by his eyes in a fight during a game (sounds weird but he did). Just a couple of weeks ago I accidentally elbowed a girl in the throat that hard she fell on her butt and slid along the ground - I felt pretty bad about that, especially as she was a teammate, and it was the first game I played with this team which I was filling in for someone else.

It is fun though once you get used to the rules, but yeah that contact rule does take a bit to get used to. I used to get pulled up for it all time too.

[Zinista]

God Damn!!! Netball is the Devil's Sport I tell ya!!! hehe

[tima]

i saw that televised on espn or discovery... not sure which... it was a couple years back, but quite a hoot... :)

does anyone know if the afl has any web simulcast available??? it seems to be about the only way i can think of to watch more than a week in review... i would much rather watch an entire game... thanks in advance for any help anyone can provide...

Sorry bringing up an old thread, but I found a cool AFL torrent site if anyone's interested. You might need to register to see anything...
http://aussietorrents.com/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=7
you'll probably find the most seeders early in the week.

At the moment it's only the pre-season knockout cup - this weekend is quarter finals, so the players skills arent up to scratch yet, and many coaches use this cup to trial new players/rookies (up to almost half a team in some cases) and new strategies. The real season starts in a few weeks time.

There's also a forum here dedicated to AFL...
http://www.bigfooty.com/forum/

If you don't have a team to follow I recommend Geelong Cats ;) (obviously who I follow). We were knocked out of the finals last year with the opposition (who went on to win the grand final) kicking a goal to take the lead with about 3 seconds left in the match, but we also had the youngest average aged team last year (plus the most injuries in the league), so I'm hoping for big things over the next 3-5 years. That loss was heartbreaking for them - one they reckon they wont forget for the rest of their lives, especially considering they were winning for the whole match except the last second, and hopefully it will fire them up for this year.

Looking back over this thread we were talking about Nathan Brown snapping his leg - yeah he may be playing his first game back this weekend (for Richmond).

Speaking of brutal injuries - there was another one in the finals last year. Geelongs captain (Steven King) accidentally kicked a guy (Jeff White) in the face. You could hear his face crack on tv when it happened. He now had 4 or 5 plates permanently in his face and a shitload of screws - but anyway, he played his first game since then last night too.

[gatsby]

I would like some advice from an Aussie forum member about the Sydney Cricket Ground. I am going to a AFL game. What are decent seats for someone new to aussie rules football? Ticketek lists several seat categories but i really don't know which to choose. The "Non alcohol concourse" seems a poor choice to me. :beer:

[tima]

I would like some advice from an Aussie forum member about the Sydney Cricket Ground. I am going to a AFL game. What are decent seats for someone new to aussie rules football? Ticketek lists several seat categories but i really don't know which to choose. The "Non alcohol concourse" seems a poor choice to me. :beer:


I'm probably too late sorry mate, but you should try asking at bigfooty.com in this thread http://www.bigfooty.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=5 - they'd probably be able to help you out.
I'm from the Melbourne area and never been to the Sydney ground either, so sorry I cant help you out there myself.

[scottbritt]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v117/scottbritt/lacrosse.jpg
Lacrosse is the sweetest sport ever. True story.

[gatsby]

I'm probably too late sorry mate, but you should try asking at bigfooty.com in this thread http://www.bigfooty.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=5 - they'd probably be able to help you out.
I'm from the Melbourne area and never been to the Sydney ground either, so sorry I cant help you out there myself.
Thanks anyway for your reply. I've bought some tickets in the most expensive category because the price was reasonable. Too bad i didn't have time to go to Melbourne because the Melbourne Cricket Ground seems to be a really great stadium.