League at the Olympics
Imagine Rugby League on the world stage as an Olympic sport. Now theres a thought which would make todays Union administrators cream their pants, and something the AFL could never aspire to, with their international competition limited to a single Irish opponent in a match showcasing the bastardisation of two codes. I promise to get to the modern Olympics by the end of this article, but in the meantime, with the Olympics returning to Athens this year, what if I were to tell you that Rugby League was played in Athens at the ancient Olympics?
Okay, so it wasnt called Rugby League, but the ancient Greeks did play a couple of ball games with remarkable similarities to League. Harpastron literally translates as handball, and Episkyro/Pheninda was played with the hands and feet, on a footy sized field, with 12 players a side. If the Olympics were opened up internationally back then, it wouldnt have been long before many other nations were competing. The Romans combined Harpastron and Episkyro, and called it Harpastum. The games popularity spread along with the expansion of the Roman Empire. Achilles would have been a mighty fine player, except rumour has it he suffered a career ending injury before he reached his prime.
They would have also faced stiff competition from Chinese soldiers who played a game called Tsu Chu as part of their military training which included gladiator-style gang tackling. They would have been good athletes with skills to burn. Their goal kicking especially, would put the likes of El Masri to shame, as the goal in Tsu Chu was a hole in a net strung between two bamboo poles, 10 metres high. The Japanese also had a game around the same time called Kemari. Their defence would have been suspect, and they would have got hammered when they had the ball, but they would have been able to put on some impressive tries, passing the ball like a hot potato, reminiscent of the Warriors in their prime. It is believed that the Chinese actually did play the Japanese in what may have been the very first international. The Australian Aboriginals would have certainly had a competitive kicking game as well, and been very comfortable under the high ball, with their Marn Grook experience, kicking and catching balls made of possum skin.
Finally, if you wanted to see some passion in the competition, you wouldnt need to go further than the Aztecs. They had a ball game called Tlachtli that involved a lot of skill and was physical enough to warrant helmets and kneepads, but the passion came from trying to avoid the consequences of losing the match, ie. being sacrificed to the Gods. Of course, this may mean very limited opportunity to develop skills, but if you were up against a team of veterans who had survived a few years in the sport, look out!
It wasnt until later that the Roman game developed into rugby-like offshoots, such as: Calcio in Italy, where play was paused and resumed if the ball stopped moving; Choule in France, where the aim was to take the ball the length of the field to score and games involved a fair bit of biff; Mob Football in England (which may have also evolved from the Welsh/Scandinavian games of Criapan/Caid/Knappan) where the biff was taken to an even higher level with property damaged in matches between entire villages where players could use any means possible to score.
Eventually Mob Football developed into Rugby Union, which in turn developed into League, which brings us back to the present day and the modern Olympics. In all fairness, Union was included as an Olympic sport until being axed for the 1928 Olympiad, never to return.
Step in Rugby League, a game where they decided to change certain rules to create a more exciting game that would attract spectators (BBC). International Rugby League is currently somewhat prone to ridicule, but with development around the globe, League has a half decent chance of eventually undoing the damage caused by Union and being admitted into the modern Olympics. However, it is still quite a while away, and sorry to the traditionalists, but it will probably have to be the Sevens format of the game, due to: tight scheduling; the need for extreme levels of excitement; and the re-emergence of the World Sevens as an annual event.
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References:
http://www.footballnetwork.org/dev/historyoffootball
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Football
http://www.rugbyfootballhistory.com/originsofrugby.htm
http://www.rugbyfootballhistory.com/olympics.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sportacademy/bsp/hi/rugby_league/rules/history/html/formation.stm