If I had a dollar for every complaint I heard about soccer and football I'd be a rich man. Don't get me wrong... these are great games and I have a lot of respect for FIFA, IRB and the NFL, but why not consider another option. Amazingly I've never heard anyone propose a new game that could potentially reduce the problems that are evident and the current list of football flavors. Let's take the soccer as the design focus. It's a game that does not allow hands to be used... but there is one player on the team that can use hands and anyone can use hands for a throw in. Why not be be bold enough to suggest no hands at all... that way we don't end up with goalies who have to stand around in the net all day and not get the same time of game experience as everyone else.
In soccer there is the persistent complaint about the offside rule... what is it and why does it exist? The flow of soccer although more organic and distributed compared to American football... is still linear and predictably forces play to a single goal per side. Better tactical flow could happen on a circular field (similar to Australian Rules Football) with dual goals... mimicking decision making that compares to real-life scenarios with optional variables. Defenders cannot game the play by favoring one goal or the other and would have to defend two goals without goalies.
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| Campball Field 2010 |
Other drags in soccer are the throw-in and substitution activities. The substitution should be handled like Australian Rules Football... with a open bench with a set number of players on the field that can interchange without game stoppage. And as far as throw-ins go... lets ditch them and go with something that allows the game play to continue. How about letting the first player to the ball past the touch line have the ball without pressure and 5 seconds to bring it back into play? We want to design a game that keep the pace moving along and so we have to work in design concepts that work to make this happen.
And finally how about a name for this game and a diagram of this circular field I'm proposing. Originally all of these games came from a game called Campball... that used a town's border as the touch line and citizens fought to move the ball to one side or the other. So as a suggestion... we can call the game Campball in line with the history of our football games.
Here is the PDF diagram and supporting details. This is all of course a prototype at this point, so if you have feedback or ideas - post a comment.
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