Crazy Games: Fight Football

If you ever wondered if your favourite team sport would be better if the players could beat the crap out of each other, Fight Football is for you.

By Conor Hogan

Fight football is part soccer, part rugby, part American football, and part mixed martial arts.  As hybrid sports go it looks pretty mental. The objective of the game is to score goals, though most of the fun comes when you are not in possession of the ball. At that point, you can fight your opponent using a varied number of fighting styles. If a player is knocked out, he is out of the game.

It claims to take its inspiration from the Ancient Roman game Harspastum, a sport whose exact rules are not entirely known. Its name was a Romanised version of the Greek verb Harpazo, which meant ‘to seize or to snatch’. The game appears to have some similarity to modern rugby as only the player with the ball could be tackled.

Each team tried to keep the ball in their own half for as long as they could, while the opposition tried to get the ball off them and into their own half. Passes to teammates could be made with either hands or feet, though kick passing was rarely used (Modern Gaelic Football teams obviously used it as a reference point). Julius Caesar was said to have played it and it was often used to maintain fitness among the military.

Fight football seems quite a bit different from this. For instance, the ball can be played forward, while the objective is to get the ball in a goal rather than keep the ball in your own half. One similarity between Harspatum and Fight Football, however, is its violence. Philospher Galen of Pergamona described the sport as a “very heavy, vigorous one, involving much use of the hold by the neck, and many wrestling holds”.

Calcio Fiorentina

Fight Football is more directly related to a sport which was itself inspired by Harspatum. That is, Calcio Fiorentina, which, since the 16th century, has been played in the third week of June almost annually at the Piazza Santa Croce in Fiorentina. Popes Urban VIII and Leo IX were among its proponents.

Its name means Florentine Kick Game, and the use of hands and feet are permitted. The game is played in a giant sandpit with 27 players on each team and goals are scored by throwing the ball in a goal about ten feet from the ground. Punching, head-butting, choking and elbowing are allowed.

The rules of Fight Football and Calcio appear almost the same, though it is played on grass instead of sand. Its governing body is the FFL and it has organised an international tournament which will take place between January and August of 2011. The teams involved will be Italy, Poland, Canada, USA, England and our own country Ireland, and will be a knockout tournament (the organisational format as well as some of the players in the matches no doubt).

Ireland will play England on March 14, with the victor going on to face either Poland or the undoubted tournament favourites Italy (players with Calcio experience). To visit the FFL's website click here.