NET RUGBY
It was originally known as rugby netball and was founded in the late 1800s as a way to keep troops returning from the Boer war out of the pubs. It started on Clapham Common in South London and in its heyday in the 1920s there were dozens of teams playing in several leagues. It’s now staging a comeback on the common with the return of a league, and a World Cup competition, held every summer. It’s simple to play. Think of the flowing teamwork you get in football, but you can pick the ball up and run with it as well.
You don’t need to worry about forward passes. They are allowed, but so are full rugby-style tackles, so the game won’t stop for a foul. The final sport to throw into the mix is netball, because to score you have to throw or drop-kick the ball into huge nets hung on posts at each end of the grassy field. It’s proved a useful way for rugby players to keep fit during the summer, and Junior – who played at the time for London Welsh – was keen to show me how physical it could be when I had a go, lifting me off my feet in a challenge when I was running in on goal. It’s a wonder I didn’t end up in the net myself. What struck me was how this sport is great for all round fitness. There were very few stoppages, so the action was non-stop which is why we needed rolling subs.
To get involved try www.netrugby.org
CANOE POLO
This crosses the paddling skills of canoeing with the ball handling skills of water polo and basketball. If you have a wicked streak in you, this could be the sport to bring it out, because the quickest way to clear your route to goal is to turn your opponent’s boat over! You have two giant nets hung on poles two metres above the water at each end of a pool or outside water course. There are two teams of five players racing up and down trying to score from their canoes. It’s a contact team game in which tactics and positional play are as important as the fitness and speed of the individual athletes, and it helps promote canoeing in a different environment.
Early records show a variety of canoe ball games being played in Great Britain in the late nineteenth century, but these were more novelty games played for fun. It wasn’t until the 1920s in France and Germany that canoe ball games were first used in earnest to build up river skills and to get more people into the boats.
At the time it was difficult to attract new paddlers and spectators and this provided an exciting introduction to canoeing. It was contained and safer, and so in 1926 the German Canoe Federation introduced ‘Kanupolo’ as a way to attract new members. It also helped build more camaraderie and swelled the coffers. They also published rules of play. The ball can be thrown by hand, or flicked with the paddle, to teammates and towards the goals. Pitches can be set up in swimming pools or any stretch of flat water. Boats are specifically designed for polo and at three metres are shorter than typical kayaks, which gives them greater manoeuvrability. It also made an early bath for me inevitable when I tried this in Putney. It pays to perfect your Eskimo roll.
‘It’s like five-a-side football, but the goals are six foot in the air, and you’re allowed to push people in,’ said one of the players competing in one of the 100 or so clubs in the UK. ‘I do it to completely de-stress from work. All the frustrations of the week get out of my system in just an hour and a half.’
Paddles are very light weight and designed with both pulling power and ball control in mind. Body protection, helmets and faceguards are all compulsory. World and European Championships are held every two years, and Great Britain is one of the world’s foremost nations, with the British women the current World Champions. Within the UK there is a National League structure for all ages, and during the summer months a number of canoe clubs host large outdoor tournaments which attract teams from all over the country and the world. Just a word of warning though: be careful how you celebrate scoring a goal, because once my arms were aloft and punching the air, I lost the only balance I had and was upside down in the pool again!
For more information go to www.canoepolo.org.uk
DISC GOLF
The aim is to get a plastic disc around a course, aiming for metal baskets instead of holes. It’s reported that the first known instance of anyone playing golf with a flying disc occurred in Vancouver, Canada, in 1926. A group of school age kids apparently played a game with tin lids. They called it Tin Lid Golf and played on a regular basis on a course they laid out around their school grounds.
The scoring and basics are the same as in golf. You aim to get birdies, by getting the disc into each basket in as few throws as possible. I played on a course at Croydon and getting the tee throws right was mind-boggling at first. The wind had me in suspense as it kidnapped my disc in mid-air and then teased me with the outcome, the disc hanging like a bird of prey above the park. Several times I read the wind’s direction wrong and went hunting for my disc in the bushes and undergrowth. The putting throws require a delicate touch and I was surprised how far I ended up walking. Exercise without realising you’re doing it, is always a winner. There are a growing number of disc golf courses, which are free to play, around the country – this might explain why there are strange wire nets that look like bins in some parks. For more go to www.bdga.org.uk
ROLF
This has nothing to do with tying a kangaroo down. Instead you drop-kick a rugby ball around a cross-country course of obstacles. The scoring is based on golf, so a par 4 hole might include kicking across a river, while the target at the end might be a car trailer or a wall that the players decide on beforehand. It was started by PE masters at the Monkton Combe school near Bath, who wanted pupils to get excited about rugby training on cold winter days when the snow was covering the pitch.
It’s simple for anyone to play. You just need a rugby ball, and an imagination to decide on your course. It was the first time I had tried to kick a rugby ball from up a tree, and also from in the middle of a river. It does wonder for your kicking skills. For more it’s www.rolf.co.uk
GOLF CROSS
It’s golf and rugby crossed again in this one, but it’s the former that’s more dominant in this hybrid sport. I spent a day with the Wasps team and Lawrence Dallaglio, playing on a golf course with mini rugby balls. You aim for nets mounted on miniature rugby posts. This sport, designed in New Zealand, certainly made the tee shots far more unpredictable, while chipping in had never been more satisfying.
‘You’ve got a much wider target to aim for,’ Lawrence told me, ‘so for you and I it should come in rather handy’. Speak for yourself, Lawrence…! For more information go to www.golfcross.org
WALKING FOOTBALL
This is a great idea, started by Bury football club, and it’s one that’s spreading through the north west. It combines the beautiful game with a stroll in the park. Its aim when it started in 2012 was to get over-50s who had given up playing football through age or injury back into the game and into exercise. It’s like five-a-side, but no one is allowed to run. Anyone who bends those knees and breaks into a trot is committing a foul and a free kick is awarded.
I had seen the benefits of walking when I tried race walking in Battersea Park. It was an organised five-kilometre race which I did in 50 minutes, alongside dozens of others doing the famous waddle. I saw how with the right technique, enhancing heel-to-toe speed, some of the top athletes can walk quicker than some of us can run, and there were a surprising number of young entries too. ‘People ask me “why don’t you just run?”,’ said one teenager who had just joined a club. ‘I say, “this is harder so why don’t you just walk?”’.
There are said to be many health benefits of walking and those apply for the pioneers of walking football too.
‘It’s an opportunity for people to play a sport that they used to in the past,’ explained Joanne Shepherd from the Bury FC Community Trust, ‘but now feel they are not physically able to, at a competitive level. So we have brought it down to basics again, to make them feel