[Andrew999]

Happy 68th Birthday today to Enki - one of the most influential storytellers in BD since the 80s.

I particularly recommend The Black Order Brigade and The Hunting Party - two stunning pieces of work that are sometimes overlooked.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enki_Bilal

[SuperScrounge]

And he also responsible for the sport of chess boxing. Creating the basic premise in one of his comics (Froid

[Andrew999]

How cool is that - to invent a sport that is then played internationally?

I once invented my own sport. It involved tossing a rubber ball down a country lane from one village to the next (luckily I grew up in a remote part of Cornwall where there was very little traffic down the lanes). The winner was of course the person who needed the least number of throws between the two villages.

For a while, it became a summer craze with the boys in my village. We had fun.

Imagine my horror, years later, when I discovered this is actually a recognised sport in Ireland and I hadn't invented a new sport after all! Curses!!

[Robb_K]

How cool is that - to invent a sport that is then played internationally?

I once invented my own sport. It involved tossing a rubber ball down a country lane from one village to the next (luckily I grew up in a remote part of Cornwall where there was very little traffic down the lanes). The winner was of course the person who needed the least number of throws between the two villages.

For a while, it became a summer craze with the boys in my village. We had fun.

Imagine my horror, years later, when I discovered this is actually a recognised sport in Ireland and I hadn't invented a new sport after all! Curses!!

With several billion Humans on The Earth, and the population growing exponentially all the time, it's highly unlikely that any given Human is going to invent something completely new.  When I was young, growing up in suburban Winnipeg, Manitoba, we boys played baseball in summer (back before skeelers were invented!).  Real rawhide baseballs were very expensive (a few dollars each-which back then, was a LOT of money for a little kid to amass).  So, we often played with just hard rubber balls (something like a handball, but bigger. 

But, using wood bats eventually would wear them down, and weaken them, until they would eventually break(usually split in two).  Usually, among the 15-20 of us regular players, we would bring 2-3 balls to a game, in case we lost one in the heavy undergrowth, or in the adjacent creek, and to use for practice before the game.  One Saturday, we lost 2 balls, and the 3rd broke in half.  It was a few hours before we'd get the call for supper, and we didn't want to stop playing.  So, we continued to play using half a ball (sliced down the middle-the hard rubber balls were made by fusing two halves).  We found that the half ball acted very strangely in the wind.  The pitcher could do amazing things with them.  We also really enjoyed the challenge of trying to hit it.  We started regularly playing a new game called "Half Ball". 

Later, when I moved with my family to Chicago, as a late teenager, I saw kids in the inner city playing "Half Ball".  They told me that that game had been around in their father's childhoods, in all the big US cities.  I guess there's nothing new under the sun, as they say.

[Robb_K]

And he also responsible for the sport of chess boxing. Creating the basic premise in one of his comics (Froid

[crashryan]

I was a big fan of the Tom Corbett, Space Cadet books. In one of them the cadets played Mercuryball, a game sort of like soccer. The ball had a bunch of mercury sloshing around inside, which made the ball move unpredictably. My friends and I thought this would be cool but we had no mercury and besides in my region nobody had even seen a soccer ball, much less played the game. Anyone want to give it a try?

[SuperScrounge]

But, how could the two combatants keep the chess pieces from getting knocked off their particular squares, if the players are throwing punches at one-another? 

A round of boxing followed by a round of chess, not trying to do both at the same time. Just think how tough it'd be to move a chess piece with a boxing glove? 

On the other hand I suppose you could have boxers standing in for the pieces and when one 'piece' tries to take another the two 'pieces' fight it out.

[The Australian Panther]

I once invented my own sport. It involved tossing a rubber ball down a country lane from one village to the next 

Tossing or bouncing?
We play a lot of sport in Australia, but that would be impracticable. My closest 'village' is 10 km away and the next is 15 km away. There are no consistent footpaths and the roads are two dangerous. I used to ride a bicycle everywhere, even in my 30s, but I don't here because the roads between towns are highways and too dangerous.
Not really a sport. I used to amuse myself by taking a small saucepan,attaching the handle to a broomstick, place a tennis ball in the saucepan and swing the whole around my head. When I was going fast enough I would turn the saucepan upside down. The ball will not fall out. Used to fascinate me. I think I got the idea from the recipe for 'billy' tea. This was a bushman's way of making tea. A billy is a tin with a looped metal handle. You would put water and tea leaves in the 'billy' and boil the tea over a fire. To brew the tea you would take the tin by the handle and swing it around your head several times.
The things we do.             

[Robb_K]

I was a big fan of the Tom Corbett, Space Cadet books. In one of them the cadets played Mercuryball, a game sort of like soccer. The ball had a bunch of mercury sloshing around inside, which made the ball move unpredictably. My friends and I thought this would be cool but we had no mercury and besides in my region nobody had even seen a soccer ball, much less played the game. Anyone want to give it a try?

Your village was so small you didn't even have a soccer ball?  Did you live in The Australian outback???  No local hat makers (Mad Hatters)?  They used mercury.  But the fumes are dangerous.  If you were in USA, there must have been some other relatively roundish balls you could have used IF you could have gotten your hands on some mercury.  Can one buy liquid mercury at a chemists' shop?  Would the pharmacist sell that chemical to a child???

[crashryan]

Answering your questions in turn, in late 1950s USA kids didn't play soccer. Yes, I'm sure soccer was played in Hispanic and immigrant communities, but we wouldn't have known. I'd be surprised if half the kids in my grade school (including me) had any idea what soccer was. It's hard to imagine how insular middle-class, small- and medium-town Americans were in those days.The closest we came to soccer was kickball, with two teams running around kicking at a ball midway in size between a basketball and a soccer ball but "bouncier" than either.

We saw mercury exhibited as a curiosity in science class, but weren't allowed to play with it ourselves. There was a scientific supply shop in the nearest big city, but only science teachers went there. We weren't the adventurous sort who'd persuade a stooge to buy mercury for us. We weren't even determined enough to smash a hundred thermometers to acquire a small stash. Like so many of our grand childhood ideas mercuryball was a languid fantasy.

[The Australian Panther]

It might be hard to imagine, but for a while there in some countries Soccer was relatively unknown. It has only recently been a well-known sport. In most of the Rugby [Union and League] playing countries and in the USA it was mainly off the Radar. USA because NFL sucks up all the oxygen. That's why in most of the world its just known as Football.   In Australia, it was mainly introduced by the non-English background migrants who came to Australia post WWII. [Greek, Italian, Croatian, Spanish, Lebanese] It was not played at all while I was in High School. If it was I would likely have played it. It has become the thing to do for parents and grandparents to encourage their children [Male and Female] to play soccer and its a Saturday morning ritual. Or it was till lockdown.
In Australia its kind of a tie between Rugby League and ARL [Australian Rules Football] I'm a league man, but for sentimental reasons, I also nominate an AFL team as 'my' team. Especially as this year they are near the top of the table. Rugby Union and Soccer are down the table. Soccer goes to the top of the table when we manage to [usually with great difficulty] qualify for the World cup. 
Socially in at least two states, 'Touch' football is huge. This is a non-contact version of Rugby League which is played socially in mixed sex teams. 
On a comics related note, I have always found it strange that those in the UK apparently are happy to read comics about football [Soccer]. Here if its not a real game, it's of no interest.
There have been a very few movies about Sport - for the same reason.         

[Andrew999]

Although raised in a football (soccer)-mad nation, I've never been interested in the game - always found it slow - it fails to grip me during the game. I resent the way that soccer sucks all the air away from other sports (as Panther put it with regard to NFL in the states)

I'm a Rugby (both codes) fan and - perhaps oddly - an AFL/AFLW fan. Outdoors, I like motorcycling - but tend towards Moto3 style races where each race is more competitive - and cycle racing (very much enjoying the competing flow of team strategies during a stage). Biathlon is another off-the-wall favourite of mine.

Indoor sports are also high on my list - basketball, handball, floorball, ice hockey in the main.

I spend a great deal of my time - far too much - watching sports :>

[Andrew999]

They wouldn't sell it to you now - not in the UK anyway - but as a child, pharmacists were less scrupulous. I used to buy the ingredients for gunpowder from the local chemist who never batted an eyelid at me being about eleven years old.

I made my own fireworks - four parts Potassium Nitrate, two parts Sulphur, one part Carbon. Light with a long rolled paper wick and stand back (well back, well well back).

[SuperScrounge]

Apparently there were in the 1800s Football Leagues in the US that played the game otherwise known as soccer. Not sure what happened to them, but later American Football got created and began using the name, so that the original football had to be called by the British-created name soccer.

There was a comedian who had a joke that you could tell if someone was an American or not by throwing a rubber ball at them and if they caught it they were American, but if they bounced it off their head, or elbow, or knee, they weren't. 

[The Australian Panther]

you could tell if someone was an American or not by throwing a rubber ball at them and if they caught it they were American, but if they bounced it off their head, or elbow, or knee, they weren't.

Very true. If it was a soccer ball that would be true. Many of us would kick it. If it was a Basketball these days most people would bounce it off the ground. If it was a smaller rubber ball and there was a wall handy  , many of us would handball it. And get out of the way if you threw it to somebody who had a stick or a bat in their hand.     

[ComicMike]

I was never interested in sports, neither actively nor passively, when the other boys were playing soccer, I preferred to read comics. To this day, I don't understand how you can watch sports on TV (or anywhere else), for me that would be a terrible punishment.

The often mystical comics by Bilal were of course also published in Germany, I particularly liked the works that Bilal created together with Pierre Christin (script).

[Robb_K]

Answering your questions in turn, in late 1950s USA kids didn't play soccer. Yes, I'm sure soccer was played in Hispanic and immigrant communities, but we wouldn't have known. I'd be surprised if half the kids in my grade school (including me) had any idea what soccer was. It's hard to imagine how insular middle-class, small- and medium-town Americans were in those days.The closest we came to soccer was kickball, with two teams running around kicking at a ball midway in size between a basketball and a soccer ball but "bouncier" than either.

We saw mercury exhibited as a curiosity in science class, but weren't allowed to play with it ourselves. There was a scientific supply shop in the nearest big city, but only science teachers went there. We weren't the adventurous sort who'd persuade a stooge to buy mercury for us. We weren't even determined enough to smash a hundred thermometers to acquire a small stash. Like so many of our grand childhood ideas mercuryball was a languid fantasy.

I didn't know you were American, Crash.  Most of the posters active on This forum seem to be English, Scots, Australians, Canadians, or European.  I assume Narfstar is American (but am not quite sure).

Yes, growing up in Canada during the late 1940s and '50s, and early 1960s, we didn't play "soccer" at all.  I did play soccer(football) in Holland when we were there.  We also played Canadian Football as kids , with teams 12 a side, and 3 downs per possession, and 1 point for a Rouge on a punt.  Canadian Football evolved out of Rugby Football, which was the most popular Football-related game in Canada, and 3rd most popular sport, after ice hockey and Lacrosse.  It was very recently when I was young 1948, that The Canadian Rugby League changed its name to The Canadian Football League. 

Apparently a similar evolution had taken place in USA, only much earlier, with Rugby Football morphing into American Football by rule changes, first allowing the ball to be handed of or shoveled forward, and later, thrown overhand (passed) forward on offence.  Those two changes probably happened some time in the 1890s and 1910s in US College football, and the first change, during the 1930s in Canadian Rugby.

I assume that some time in the late 1800s, people in Rugby, England, started changing the rules of Football, and Rugby Football evolved into a separate sport.

As for myself, I grew up playing mainly ice hockey, as we had long, long winters in Manitoba, back before Global Warming, with 4.5 to 5.5 months of snow and ice on the ground, with no thaw, and lots of frozen lakes and ponds on which to skate.  My uncle, who lived next door to us, was a youth hockey coach, and my father and he took out the fence between our backyards, and made one large ice rink every Autumn.  We had wooden walls, and every mid to late October, we we would lay down a large tarpolin, and start laying down layers of hose water, letting it freeze over the previous one, until our rink was thick enough.  We had a hand push ice grader for smoothing.  I played and or practised virtually every day for half of every year. I started playing in organised leagues at 6 years old, and got up to making a team at the highest level of amateur hockey, whose teams were sponsored by the professional leagues.  Soon after, my parents moved to USA, and, at age 16, I had to decide whether to move with them, or stay with my uncle and aunt to pursue a potential hockey career. I moved with my parents, hoping to get a scholarship to play at a US University, but Chicago, at that time, didn't have a high enough level of Junior Hockey to allow me to be seen by scouts to earn a scholarship. 

I played some (Canadian) Football, Baseball, and skied as a youth in Canada, played Football(Soccer) as a child in Holland (I spent every summer there as a youth).  And as an adult, I was a recreational back-country skier, and played in recreational Football(Soccer) leagues in Denmark and Jordan. when living and working there.

I sincerely doubt that a chemist(pharmacist) would have been allowed to sell mercury to a minor ( or, at least, person under 18 years old) in Canada when I was growing up.  It is a toxic and hazardous substance.

[Andrew999]

There were many forms of football played in Britain and throughout Europe (and before that apparently in Egypt, Greece and Rome) with localised rules - some of which allowed handling of the ball - right up until the mid-1800s. (As a child, I played a variant in Cornwall where you were allowed to hit balls above chest height with your fist instead of using your head). These were broadly called folk football and variations still exist locally in the UK (mostly seen in villages on feast days like May Day and Italy), In Ireland, Gaelic Football, originally a folk football, is big business - and of course this spawned Aussie-Rules Football through Irish emigration at the turn of the last century).

Rugby Football was first codified in 1845 by WD Arnold at Rugby School - the first clubs emerging by the 1860s.

Association Football (soccer) split away in 1863, banning the use of hands except by the goalkeeper.

Rugby League divided from the Rugby Union in 1895 - the two codes slowly divided in terms of rules but intriguingly the rules have converged recently to some extent with the ruck in Rugby Union now resembling the play-the-ball in Rugby League and both codes now having a 40/20 50/22 type rule.

Odd quirk - the Toronto Wolfpack (Canada) play in the British Super League (and will be joined by a New York team next year).

I think Robb covered the evolution of the North American variants pretty well.