Just when you thought that football, rugby, MMA and water sports are some of the few things to pride oneself in,the sheer existence of these sports demasculinizes the “every-man”.
Shrovetide Football
The conventional way of observing the first day of Lent, Ash Wednesday, is to see it as a day of fasting, abstinence and repentance. But in the town of Ashbourne, England, the inhabitants are divided into two groups by their town river to play a giant game of what is essentially a slightly modified version of football and rugby combined. The boundary of this sport spans almost the entire village, with the goals being around three miles apart. As the players intend to score the only rules are to keep out of the solemn public areas and the private properties, no use of vehicles or of hiding the ball, and there should be no intentional hurting of another player. The game begins in the center of the village with the residents clustering around the “starter” who throws the ball from a height into the crowd, already in the formation you see in rugby except larger, more humid, and with normal sized people. The rest of the game is basically a giant scrum, with hundreds of people pushing in the general direction of the goal and using all the means necessary to get it there.
Sepik River Canoeing
The end of the National Canoe and Kundu Festival in Papua New Guinea signifies the finale: a canoe race through the mighty Sepik River. Of course, the entire river isn’t traversed since it’s over 600 miles long and that would be certifiably, bat-guano insane. The actual race, however, isn’t that less exorbitant: the 15 kilometer span of the zip is supposed to be canoed while standing, not to mention the competitors are going against the current of the river, which is just replete with sand-bars and snags. These canoes are not unlike the gondolas in the Venetian Lagoon, with the only difference being they’re bewilderingly narrow and therefore, in a constant tilt. Maneuvering these dugout canoes with the use of oars sounds, just thinking about it, well-nigh impossible since they don’t punt themselves forward but rather they row themselves. The race has many other factors which make it even more interesting: the threat of crocodiles, the acrid heat, and the risk of infection from the water being used a toilet in all those years of riverbank settlement; this, truly, is a virile gambol.
Calcio Storico
Calcio Storico, sometimes translated as the “kick-game” or “bare-knuckle football”, is both an outrageous and laudable sport that happens in the fine city of Florence, Italy. The aim is simply to put a ball into the other team’s goal and there are only a few rules: it’s fifty minutes of continuous play, no substitutions, no thumbing, and ironically, no kicks to the head. Other than that, anything goes: punching, grappling, take-downs, choking, sand-in-the-face, verbal abuse. When the whistle is blown the game starts with, no joke, nothing else but straight up brawling, having the idea that beating around an opponent will make him a weaker competitor later when the actual playing starts. Imagine: there are 25 competitors in a team playing in this giant sand pit and because of all that lost energy it soon ends up being muddy which, if you wrap your mind around it, is pretty disgusting. There are referees in the game but they wear perplexing outfits and wave around a plume so as they try to do their refereeing duties, such as calming fights down, they’re not at all taken seriously. Watching a game of Calcio Storico is like watching a large street fight with a ball, each fight a microcosm of the general situation.
