We all know football: two teams try to kick the ball inside the opposing team’s goal, players (except goalkeepers) not allowed to touch the ball with their hands.
Handball is similar but opposite: two teams try to move the ball inside the opposing team’s goal, players (except goalkeepers) not allowed to touch the ball with their feet; you can only run three steps when holding with the ball in your hands but you can dribble.
Shouldn’t there be a sport like this:
AllBall - two teams try to get a ball inside the opposing team’s goal. You can throw the ball, kick the ball, hit it with any body part. You can only run three steps when holding the ball in your hands.
And why isn’t there a sport like this? Can I patent my idea and make millions?
There’s also very little kicking involved in football (American version), but there’s that “foot” word right at the beginning of it! (Though kicking is actually illegal in basketball, isn’t it?)
Semantics. And if we’re getting semantical, “Field Goals” is a statistic very much in use in basketball, referring to the number of times you get that ball through the tiny little hoop.
Think Gaelic football fits the bill here. It’s been a while since I watched a game, so Irish posters can correct me, but I think it involves all that you say. You definitely can’t just run with the ball either, you need to knock it up out of your hands, like an inverted basketball bounce, every few strides.
As far as I know, you can’t just kick the ball anytime you want in American football, right? Suppose I’m the quarterback and I was just handed the ball - I can’t kick it instead of throwing it.
By goals, I mean football or handball looking goals (they are similar in shape but not identical in size.)
Well, drat. I’ve been beaten to the punch. I’ve looked it up and it seems that Gaelic football fits my definition.
The wikipedia article on Gaelic football says “[Gaelic football] is, together with hurling, one of the two most popular spectator sports in Ireland.” By hurling I am going to assume that they don’t mean “throwing up after drinking too much.”
What you describe, Arnold, is very similar to Aussie Rules Football. There, you have to dribble the ball after x number of steps, which gets interesting given that the ball is oblong. You can kick the ball anytime you want, to move it around the field. What you can’t do is pass forward. And there are no goal keepers, per se, because the goals are upright and infinitely high.
I think the main issue with the idea of a sport you can do what you propose is how do you stop someone from making a score? What the football sports all eventually have to do is come up with some artificial or arbitrary means of determining how a team/player has to give up the ball. In soccer, the decision was to take the ball out of players’ hands, so that taking the ball away (tackling) becomes easy to do. In Rugby and American football, the originators wanted to be able to carry the ball, so they created artificial rules about having to reset the play, or give up the ball, when you are physically brought down to the ground (tackled).
When I was in high school, we played a sport I’ve never seen since. The field was rectangular, with goals at each end that were made of wooden backboards with a squarish opening in the middle. The object was to propel the ball (a normal American-style football) through the opening in the middle. Doing so scored either 3 or 6 points (been too long for me to remember). Hitting the backboard without going through the opening resulted in a point. The catch to the game was you could only run forward three steps with the ball held in your hands. Backwards and sideways, you could run as much as you wanted, though there may have been a time limit to possessing the ball. You could throw or kick the ball to teammates. I can’t recall what it was called, but it incorporates many of the elements you discuss…
I think you can. Or at least you used to be able to as long as you are behind the line of scrimmage. It’s called a quick kick. It was popular when defenses were more dominant.
Actually, a drop kick is a style of kick. See Flutie, Doug. It is doubtful that anyone would drop kick a quick kick. Punting is safer.
Actually, you can. You can punt on any down, from anywhere on the field. You can even do it from beyond the line of scrimmage. You just can’t advance the ball that way. Once it’s punted the punting team can’t touch the ball again untill the other team touches it first.
You virtually never see quarterbacks punt anymore, but at one time it was fairly common. The last punting QB I can remember in the NFL was Danny White for the Dallas Cowboys, and I’m pretty sure I can remember seeing him run past the line of scrimmage and punt at least once.
Hmmm. Maybe they changed the rule. I could swear I remember a time when you could theoretically run past the line of scrimmage on a punt. You can still punt on any down, though.
You still see it occasionally, esp. on third and long, though only when the quarterback is reasonably good at punting. Randall Cunningham used to do this trick from time to time.
The drop-kick was the original way that field goals were kicked. You dropped the ball from your hand (similar to initiating a punt), but you let the ball hit the ground, and you kicked it after it bounced off the ground. This was easier to do in the early days of the game, when a football looked more like a rugby ball, but the ball gradually got longer and narrower (to facilitiate passing), and drop-kicking was replaced by the place-kick.
However, the drop-kick was never taken out of the rule book, and Doug Flutie did, indeed, score an extra point on a drop kick in his final game – it was the first successful drop-kick in the NFL since 1941.
Nope; the only plays that are restricted in when they can be run are:
point-after-touchdown conversions (only immediately after a touchdown, obviously)
kickoffs (only immediately after an offensive score)
free kicks (only immediately after a safety, or a fair catch)
While you almost never see a team punt on any down other than fourth, there’s no rule that says they cannot punt on an earlier down (there’s simply almost never a reason why a team would choose to do so).
Similarly, about the only time you ever see a team attempt a field goal on any down other than fourth down is very late in a half, or in overtime. In the former case, it’s usually because time is running out, and the team wants to attempt the kick before time expires. In the latter case, you’ll occasionally see a team attempt a field goal (which would end the game, if successful, in sudden-death overtime) on second or third down; this is usually done so that, in case of a bad snap or bad hold, the holder can just fall on the ball, and the team can try the field goal again on the next down.
This football rules minutiae is interesting, but football doesn’t fit the sport I had in mind because you can’t pass the ball from one teammate to another by kicking it, except right at the beginning of a play.
Well, it would be the same as in team handball or basketball (if you are using your hands) - you can’t run while holding the ball, you have to dribble. If you’re using your feet, then it would be like soccer. An addition to the rule would be that once you put the ball down you can’t pick it up again unless the ball has been touched by another player. So if I run while dribbling, then drop the ball and kick it forward, I can’t immediately pick it up again and continue to run while dribbling.
Never heard of this one. Where was this? In the US?
Yes, it was in California in the 70s. We had the football practice field set up with two whole fields (four goals) special built for it. Wish I could remember what we called that game…
This article deals with one of the various sports known as speedball, in this case a game based on Association football (soccer) and European team handball. For details of other games known as speedball, see: Speedball (disambiguation).
It exists. I Was trying to find the version I Remember playing, and this is best I could come up with.
Also, the Playstation Video game Speedball 2000 is a different beast altogether, but it is still a good game, with a similar name.
Now, a game that has a Soccer ball, AND a Hand ball AT THE SAME TIME I would pay to see that. Then again, I have ADD so …
