Winter Football

[Chadwick]

The winter Olympics have just concluded but as we start the immediate prep for the next winter games I have a proposal. It's time to make winter/snow/ice football whatever you want to call it an Olympic event. The rules would be simple and would be quite the spectacle.

This five-a-side football played on that size of a regular five-a-side pitch where the sidelines are a 4-5 foot wall of snow all around the pitch and the base of the pitch as a good 1-2 feet of snow. Each player wears snow shoes which would require players to focus on technique, strength, balance, and creativity.

There are all kinds of different football. There is beach football and of course futsal but winter or snow football is the last frontier that can capitalize on the world's most popular game. It would also give northern countries good at Nordic sports the chance to be really something in this new type of football. It would also be more accessible to other countries and people, as, besides snowshoes, it wouldn't have the cost burden of something like skiing or bobsledding. The winter games will be back before we know it and winter football with the unique rules mentioned above should be on the event list.

[Wiggli]

Hercule always enjoys international competitions, whether as a spectator or participant. So he was also rapt by the recent Winter Olympics, and also spent some time imagining the nearest football parallel. Of course Ice Hockey is a strong contender. One easy option would be simply to take away the sticks and penalize using the gloves (except for the goal tender). They could nudge the puck along with their skates or if somehow they could keep it airborne use their head or torso to propel the game object forward. It might just devolve into a sort of ice capade where the majority of players are skating around doing tricks instead of meaningfully contesting the action.

I like the image you propose better, trudging through deep powder with snowshoes. That would be quite the workout simply traversing the pitch, but I think quite fun to watch as well. Something about it evokes an image of ice age Neanderthals and the origin of sport in general, a pure - if slightly barbaric - contest. One benefit I think of either ice or snow as a terrain is it would lead to less theatrics around borderline injuries, it's one thing to squirm on the grass simulating pain and quite another to do the same on a winter surface.

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212 words