Millenium 8

Millenium eights
Millenium eights
A critique of sport.
Millenium eights is played on a field as shown in diagram one. Millenium eights is based on the millennium and the significance of the number 8. I have endeavored to keep the cost of the game and equipment to a minimum.
The game is not complex and can be understood and played and enjoyed by all.
The sport is a non-contact sport, with emphasis on skills rather than power.
Here are the rules.
Rule 1
Players in a team.
There are 8 players in a team. To play the game you need up to 8 teams, but it can be played with just two teams.
Each team has a playing area and a referee. The referee is independent, and the decision of the referee is final.
Rule 2
Play
Play is on a pitch as shown in figures 1 and 1A. Play lasts for 80 minutes, divided into 8 ten minute sections.
There is a two minute rest period between each section of play, making the total playing time 94 minutes.

Colours
Each team plays in a different colour scheme to avoid confusion. Teams can decide on any single colour, but no two tone, stripes or flashes or checks are to be used.

The ball
Play is with a ball corresponding to the team’s colour. A red team therefore play with a red ball.
A standard association football is used for play. Play starts at the beginning of each section of ten minutes on the line shown in figure 1

Goals
Goals are scored my throwing or kicking or launching the ball via any part of the body into the air and into the goal tube(figure 2A) and catching the same ball cleanly as it exits the goal tube. Each side has 2 goal tubes in its play area, one for its own colour, one for all the other colours.
Goal tubes
The goal tubes are 8 meters high on entrance and 4 meters high on exit. The tube diameter is twice the size of a standard association football. Tubes are made of netting and supported by hoops, much like basketball. They have a head board, as in basketball. See figure 2A

Dropping the ball
If the ball is dropped, or deemed to have been dropped by the referee, it is handed to the opposing team. If a ball leaves the playing area, any player from any opposing team may try to claim the ball, by moving on the dead ball area.

Players
Any player may attempt a goal, but only the catcher can catch the ball as it exits.
There is one catcher per team. He/She wears a big C on their shirt.
It’s a mixed sex sport, teams must have both sexes to count.
Players may leave their own segment in an attempt to gain access to other team’s balls, in any ten minute section of play. They must move along the dead ball area.
Players men: Shorts, socks, underwear, trainers, T shirts.
Players equipment woman : T Shirts , skirt or shorts,, socks, trainers, underwear.
Object
The object of the game is to score as many goals as possible in the time allowed, either with your own colour ball, or with that of an opposing team’s ball. Goals can be scored with any or all available balls in play.
Goals with your own colour score 1 point, with an opposing team’s colour, goals score 8 points.
Goals are scored by throwing the ball so it enters the correct goal tube and then by catching it as it exits. A goal only counts for a clean entrance, exit and catch.

The team with the most goals after each ten minute section wins. The points are awarded thus:
Winning team 8 points
Second 7 points
Third 6 points
Fourth 5 points
Fifth 4 points
Sixth 3 points
Seventh 2 points
Eighth 1 point
Thus it’s possible to win a maximum of 64 points. Teams who win the first section of play haven’t won the match.Its the team with the most points at the end of the 8 time periods that wins.

Cost
It costs minimum 1 euro per player to play this game, with no maximum. However, all players in all teams must pay the same amount. The lowest figure suggested by any team will be the one adopted by all teams. Bids are made in sealed envelopes,(envelopes the same colour as the team) handed to the referees before play starts. This is so that the poorest can play the game.
Prizes
The entry fee is used by organizers to pay the winning team a prize. The prizes are awarded thus:

20 % goes to the games inventor.
30% goes to the winning team.
20% euros goes to the referees.
20% to second place team.
10% third place.
A season lasts 8 games. The winning team from the end of the season gets a prize of 10% of the monies allocated to the games inventor.

Sin BIN
Any player touching another player, or pushing or breaking any rules will have to sit out for 8 minutes in the sin bin. They get a yellow card. If a player gets two yellow cards, they are out for the rest of the game.

Substitutes
A substitute is allowed. They can be used whenever, noting the limit below ,and replace another team player. A team must indicate to the referee that they wish to use a substitute. The substitute can be used a maximum of 8 times (IE once per section of play) to replace any other player.

Registration
Team’s names, addresses, and members are to be logged onto the official web site. Teams must notify the website of the dates and participants and their colours for and all any matches, and make the payments so that the prizes and officials can be paid.

Sportsmen and their demons

I looked through the best and the most flamboyant sportsmen and I noticed that some of them are so great that they have to fight their own greatness with demons of their own invention.
Lets take a look at some examples.

Football 
The list of footballers who have struggled with demons is a long and depressing one.
Peter Shilton and gambling
George Best and booze
Paul Gasgoigne and gambling/booze

Three giants in football. Shilton played well into his 40’s, George Best was just a pop star god who played football and Paul Gasgoigne believed he was the best.
Best drank himself to an early grave, Gazza’s doing it now and Shilton’s gambling cost him everything.
They created another environment to escape the stress of the real one, they were so brilliant they added challenges to make life interesting.
Best was a name that sold newspapers, and his antics made sure he was often in them.
Gazza is the same, following that well trod path. beaten and with no plan B, death is the easy option.
Shilton’s wife of 40 years has left him and he has nothing left except the memories.

 Shilton

Best

Gazza

Snooker
The ultimate great one was Alex “Hurricane” Higgins.
He could pot the balls off the lampshades, and was very popular.Why? He played to the crowd, and it cost him many a match including the world championship.Once the crowd were behind him, he was either unbeatable or he went to pieces.
Higgins sold papers with his antics, the newspaper men knew it, Alex knew it and they fed of each other.
Alex smoked and drank himself to death, dying of malnutrition and cancer and pneumonia.
Higgins popularized the sport.Alex demonized the sport.
Lets face it, watching someone pot balls into a pocket isn’t the most exciting sport, and it takes a genius with electric character to make it interesting. Alex did it, winning the public.
Drink and smoking and gambling and Alex Higgins killed Alex Higgins.That’s what the sponsor’s wanted.
Never predictable, the ‘bad boy’ of snooker. Great moments. But not great consistency.
Friends included Oliver Reed and Brian Moon two of the biggest binge drinkers in history.
Frustrating yet bewitching.

RIP Alex Higgins

The sickness of sport

Sport is sick. Its not about winning or loosing anymore, its about money. Well, that and winning.Because a winner brings money (or perhaps sportsmen are paid to throw matches for betting scandals?)
Sport isn’t about individual pride anymore, or team pride, or national pride. Its just Money.
Things I’d do.
1) Make every winner stand to attention to the Olympic anthem and flag. Not the flag/anthem of their nation.
2) Put an earnings cap on to any player (and include sponsorship and ads in the cap) of 1 Million us dollars per year. That seems enough. Hell, I’d love to earn that per year, wouldn’t you.
And I slog my guts out 8 hours plus per day. So none of that namby pamby ‘they could break a leg tomorrow’, because so could I. Besides, most top sports people go on into the media and earn a lot there too. Most top sports men and women have a career after sports.
3) Make top sportsmen and women pay some money back into the grass roots of their sports, or support those sportsmen less able/disabled/injured/ and thier families. That’s the definition of ‘fair play’

Telling me that ‘its a free market and they can earn what they like’ just doesn’t cut the mustard as the same applies to us all, and we sure as hell cant demand what we like from our boss, regardless of if we think we deserve it or our respective talents.
Sport. The weathy and beautiful (well except Wayne Rooney) play for the spectators (poor and ugly).
It really gets me that those sportmen and their girlfriends can spend 2 million on a new second home but the proles have to slog there guts out for 30 years for a house 1/20th of the value. Tax them more.