HamsterDesTodes wrote: quote="JeffEngel" quote="HamsterDesTodes" You can play european football (lets sidestep at least this religious debate^^) with a ball made of raggs, or - and thats how it was done untill quite recently, certainly longer than to the point Safehold is now - with the bladder of various domestic animals surrounded by lots of tiny pieces of leather. No need for high tech or even low tech. The origin of the hexagons on the balls you still see today is that they were once made of scrap leather, with the shape supplied by the bladder within. /quote
Thanks. At risk of offending other people's sports religions - How much change would it make to playing (European) football with a smaller but solid-rubber ball?
Also - for all we know - maybe Safehold-native species have better bladders for inflation.
There might be some bias in our samples of Safehold sports, too. Most of the action that way has been on Charis, and that before the world blew up. Charis is mighty hot. Hockey is out, and either football and lacrosse may be unpopular given the climate. They could probably be used as a horrid form of capital punishment on Zebediah.... /quote
Todays football couldnt be played with a solid rubber ball, you need a ball light enough to play long passes and with a mass low enough not to knock people out if they try to play a header.
But keep in mind that european and american football were once the same game. They only diverged after some english students couldnt come to an agreement about the rules (No, I dont remember reading whether it was a Cambridge vs Oxford game^^), and look how different they ended up mere centuries later.
Safeholdian football had a millenium to drift, so I guess you could play with a roundish stone or an oval piece of wood if needs must and still call the resulting game football. A solid rubber ball would be quite familiar in comparison.
'Rugby School is best known as the birthplace of the sport that bears its name as well as the fable of its pupil William Webb Ellis picking up the ball in 1823.[4] In 1845 three Rugby School pupils produced the first written rules of the "Rugby style of game."'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugby_School The school has been operating since 1600, and for more information, may I recommend "Tom Brown's School Days" an 1857 novel by Thomas Hughes. For further information on some of the characters who appeared in there, specifically Harry Flashman, an no goodnik of the finest water, in the series of novels by George Macdonald Fraser.