Australia is a proud sporting nation, and that’s something that we’re starting to forget with all this technology bouncing around nowadays. I miss the older times, when weekends were spent watching sport, playing sport, training for sport, and on the odd occasion we might invent a sport. Mine never really took off, although I thought there was a load of potential. One I invented was ‘Face-Ball’, sort of like a cross between volleyball and cricket where the bat was your face.
I even tried to set up a league, with tournaments and everything. Basically, you get yourself some sturdy indoor cricket nets; very important, since the ball is very soft and has a tendency to fly off into the distance. The opposing team ‘spikes’ the ball right at the batter, i.e. the punter tosses it into the air and smacks it with their face. The cricket netting is set up on the opposite side, and the aim of the batter is to smack the ball with their face and have it fly into the net. That’s an instant three points, but actually quite hard to do. In most cases, the batter will smack the ball, it’ll fly into the opposing team and they have to make it to the second base before it gets punted again. At that point another batting teammate has stepped up, they smack it towards the netting, and so on. The aim is to get your entire team around, or get the ball into one of the nets.
So I guess there’s a bit of rounders thrown in, what with the bases and all. If the opposing team punts the ball and you haven’t yet reached first base, the batter can’t step up and you’re out. You switch at half time, change the positioning of the sports netting and the roles reverse. The main rule: only faces are allowed to touch the ball!
Never took off, though. If it had, we might’ve been able to manufacture custom balls that don’t break noses and bruise faces. Missed opportunities…
-Mike