Extract from Chapter 14: ‘Oddballs’ | Speedball and volata
Another hybrid football-related game, speedball, was invented in 1921 by Elmer Mitchell at the University of Michigan, as part of its physical education programme. It could be regarded as a mixture of soccer, rugby and flag football, and is still played, mainly outdoors, at some American colleges. Each side has 11 players. One of them is a goalkeeper, the only player allowed in a marked area in front of the goal. The goalposts are similar to those used in rugby and American football.
When the ball is rolling or bouncing (a ground ball), players can only kick it. However, an air ball (as with a mark in Australian Rules) can be caught, after which the player may carry it, throw it (in any direction) or drop-kick it. A ball-carrier can be tackled by pulling off his ‘flag belt’, and must then put the ball down and kick it, although not at the goal. Speedball has a variety of scoring systems, with points awarded for a field goal (kicking the ball between the posts and under the crossbar), a drop kick over the crossbar, a touchdown or a penalty kick.
A broadly similar game, volata, was devised in Italy in the late 1920s by National Fascist Party chairman Augusto Turati. He presented it as a classically Italian, amateur alternative to soccer, which (much like some of today’s more bombastic British newspaper columnists) he saw as a morally corrupt game, ‘full of verminous mercenaries’.
Volata was played eight-a-side, with goalkeepers. The ball could be played with the hands or legs, and could be held for no more than three seconds. A player could be tackled by grabbing him above waist level. As in handball, the object of the game was to throw the ball into a goal from outside a marked area.
Under some fascist-style coercion from the authorities, hundreds of teams were formed. A national championship was organised, with dictator Benito Mussolini reportedly attending the finals. But the rise of soccer’s popularity in Italy was unstoppable, and there was little genuine interest in the new sport, particularly after the national soccer team’s Mussolini-approved 1934 World Cup victory. Volata, once lauded by Turati as ‘a superfascist sport for the Italians of tomorrow’, quietly disappeared, and all references to it were wiped from the party’s records.
When the ball is rolling or bouncing (a ground ball), players can only kick it. However, an air ball (as with a mark in Australian Rules) can be caught, after which the player may carry it, throw it (in any direction) or drop-kick it. A ball-carrier can be tackled by pulling off his ‘flag belt’, and must then put the ball down and kick it, although not at the goal. Speedball has a variety of scoring systems, with points awarded for a field goal (kicking the ball between the posts and under the crossbar), a drop kick over the crossbar, a touchdown or a penalty kick.
A broadly similar game, volata, was devised in Italy in the late 1920s by National Fascist Party chairman Augusto Turati. He presented it as a classically Italian, amateur alternative to soccer, which (much like some of today’s more bombastic British newspaper columnists) he saw as a morally corrupt game, ‘full of verminous mercenaries’.
Volata was played eight-a-side, with goalkeepers. The ball could be played with the hands or legs, and could be held for no more than three seconds. A player could be tackled by grabbing him above waist level. As in handball, the object of the game was to throw the ball into a goal from outside a marked area.
Under some fascist-style coercion from the authorities, hundreds of teams were formed. A national championship was organised, with dictator Benito Mussolini reportedly attending the finals. But the rise of soccer’s popularity in Italy was unstoppable, and there was little genuine interest in the new sport, particularly after the national soccer team’s Mussolini-approved 1934 World Cup victory. Volata, once lauded by Turati as ‘a superfascist sport for the Italians of tomorrow’, quietly disappeared, and all references to it were wiped from the party’s records.