Sports on Safehold

You wouldn't play football with a solid ball of any material.

Not more than once, at any rate, and not likely for a full game. Which actually does fit with the Aztec ball game, in a way: you'd have shattered your feet rather than losing your heart, but at least you're alive at the end of the day.

HamsterDesTodes wrote:

JeffEngel wrote: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....

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.

Kytheros wrote:

StalksInShadows wrote:Sports with inflated rubber balls aren't being played, or Howsmyn would have had inflated rubber tires for his bicycle in stead of solid ones.

If memory serves, the switch to inflatable tires was done to save rubber during WW2. Prior to that, tires were solid rubber.

Err John Boyd Dunlop (re)invented pneumatic tyres in 1888, see Wikipedia on him. The company was sold for £5 million in the late 1890's which suggests they were making rather a lot of them. Automobile tyres were produced from 1900.

Silverwall wrote:Well if he was trying to enforce a staid and conservative approach he should have introduced cricket. Nothing says conservative and unchanging as a sport that takes 5 days to complete at the highest level. That would also mesh perfectly with the 5 day week, or he could have shortened it by a day to fit matches between gods days (Wednesdays?)

Also given it's an english game the weather in the temple lands, northern harchong and siddamark will be perfect

Oh nooooss! This would inevitably lead to dead parrots and Ministry of Silly Walks! Erayk Iedle meet the CoGA Inquisition!

When I came across the following video, I had to think of this thread.
Behold, the ultimate proof that european (or in this case norwegian) football is by far superior to its american cousin!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBQt3-ezBQs


PS dont forget to actually activate the subtitles

When people say sports they really mean team sports right? Football (soccer) seems almost certain, though the rules may be odd. Apparently the ancient Chinese, Greeks etc had games with feather filled spheres, though I thought the original English form was a rag "ball". Since (Terran) Rugby split off from football it's possible it or equivalent games exist e.g. Gaelic football, Aussie Rules. Gridiron seems improbable to me since it requires armour and 2 teams - one for offence, one for defence. Stick games such as hockey, golf and polo could exist - polo might be popular amongst the Desnarians. If equatorial lands like Charis have a preference for water sports e.g. "rugby" what would be played in the Temple\northern realms amongst the snow?

Bewildered wrote:When people say sports they really mean team sports right? Football (soccer) seems almost certain, though the rules may be odd. Apparently the ancient Chinese, Greeks etc had games with feather filled spheres, though I thought the original English form was a rag "ball". Since (Terran) Rugby split off from football it's possible it or equivalent games exist e.g. Gaelic football, Aussie Rules. Gridiron seems improbable to me since it requires armour and 2 teams - one for offence, one for defence. Stick games such as hockey, golf and polo could exist - polo might be popular amongst the Desnarians. If equatorial lands like Charis have a preference for water sports e.g. "rugby" what would be played in the Temple\northern realms amongst the snow?

Baseball, just shovel off the field when it melts down to a foot or so, and call it spring training. Check the church probably decrees it's spring, now go out and play baseball.

Readers should be aware that the following Earth sports have been seriously distorted if not abandoned altogether due to recent Safehold technological advances:

Polo: Graphite mallets are now allowing players to propel balls with such force that they are seriously injuring horses. In fact, Princess Irys was recently hurt when Nimue accidentally banked a score off her shoulder.

Croquet: This is in the process of being abandoned, as buckyball mallets designed by OWL are allowing balls nestled against an opponent's ball to be propelled over a hundred yards from the nearest wicket.

Tiddlywinks: Merlin's unfair advantage in having plastic winks and superior reflexes has led to seijins being banned from the game.

Darts: Lywys' steel darts and OWL-directed aerodynamic optimization have made any game involving her a foregone conclusion.

Hide and seek: GPS tracking is now strictly prohibited, especially where Prince Daivyn is involved.

Happily, the inability to introduce electricity and in particular electric chairs has meant that musical chairs is still a nonlethal sport.

Chess and checkers: while still practiced on the mainland, these are no longer allowed on the Out Islands, as the temptation to surreptitiously beat many humans at once is seriously distracting OWL from his surveillance duties.

Archery: rocket-propelled arrows are destroying too many targets.

Luckily, in horse racing, the prohibition on electricity is still preventing the "buzzer", wherein the jockey shocks a horse into faster movement at a key point in the race. However, Prince Nahrmann is intensely engaged in crafting a scheme to rig races, although he hasn't yet figured out what he will do with the resulting betting winnings.

Baseball: Although Merlin has not noticed it yet, Cayleb has a crash project to develop steroids, which he intends to reserve entirely for the Tellesberg team.

The list goes on: pole vaulting with plastic poles, figure and speed skating with steel blades instead of bones, steel jockstraps in boxing, huge sweet spots in rackets in tennis (but not electronic "out" detection), graphite clubs and aerodynamic balls in golf, and expelling Nimue from vault, balance beam, and other competitions due to her uncanny ability to stick a dismount.

As for American football, all games between CoG and EoC teams are now off, not least because participation of Ahbraim on the EoC side has made them even more lethal than usual. And don't get me started on Aivah and the biathlon.

wkernochan wrote:Readers should be aware that the following Earth sports have been seriously distorted if not abandoned altogether due to recent Safehold technological advances:


And don't get me started on Aivah and the biathlon.

Nice!