Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Games that should exist: Short-pitch Gaelic Football

This game might very well already exist, but if it does no one is using my key terms to write about it on the Internets.

I want there to be a version of Gaelic football played with fewer players on a soccer/football pitch and using a size 4 soccer ball.

I want this to exist because:

  1. Gaelic football is awesome, but Gaelic football pitches are not common outside of Ireland.  They exist, they're just not common.  Every town as a soccer field, though.
  2. Gaelic football is awesome, but fifteen people (plus substitutes) is a lot of people.  If you had 30 people interested in playing, and teams had 15 players a piece, you'd only get 2 teams out of that.  But if teams had 7 players each (Goal keeper, three backs and three forwards), you'd be able to rustle up some more teams and get a bit of a league happening.
  3. Gaelic football is awesome, but an actual Gaelic football is a bit of a speciality item.  Size 4 soccer balls are much more readily available.  Although, I don't know if they'll bounce as well...
The way I see it, if you could just sort out some sort of pole extension for a normal football goal and re-purpose any old soccer field into a Gaelic football field, you'd have a lot more people playing the game world wide.

Granted, the short-pitch, cut-down version might not prepare people for the big-kids' version, and it might end up being one of those things where the "let's bring this to the masses" version ends up eclipsing the traditional version (hello, 20/20 cricket) and building skill sets that don't transfer easily to the "real game"...

But, still, Gaelic football is awesome, and it would be nice if it could be played in any town with a soccer pitch (which is pretty much every town on the planet).

If you know of such a game, and it has a name and rules and stuff, please let me know.

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