Football one is thrown back by the scrum

Football Passion, action, excitement, beauty.

Anyone who has played any of the seven variationsof football knows the allure of their sport. Whether a round ball skids alongthe grass towards your feet or an ellipse one is thrown back by the scrum half, the nature is the same. The moment is yours. The opportunity to drive forward, dribbleor make a pass is there.

You may get tackled and hit the ground, but every sooften you break through or dribble past the last man and you score. At amateuror at professional level the reward is the same, we want to win. This is why weplay. The pouring rain or the scorching sun will not deter us. History and evolutionPresent day, there are seven variations of football: American football, associationfootball, Australian rules football, Canadian football, rugby league football, and rugby union football.

We will focus on association football or soccer, andrugby union. All variations of football have evolved from common ancestors. AncientGreeks and Romans (600A. D) played games that involved hoofing a ball with thefoot. The Greek game phaininda, later renamed by the romans harpastum, was a passing team orientated ballgame, between two sides in a controlled area.

The teams would try throw theball over the head of the other team and force the opposition back behind amarked line, with the centre of the playing field having some kind of specialmeaning. Although little is known about the rules of the game, there areancient ornaments that depict people practising with a ball at feet, and a poemfrom the Greek poet Antiphanes describes a game of phaininda, writing of shortpass resulting in a scrum! Over the seas, in China, the Han Dynasty (206BC to220AD) created a game called cuju, which literally means kick ball. Two teamstried to kick a ball through a hole in a sheet hanging between posts. Playerscould not use their hands, like today’s soccer, and melees took place that islikened to modern day rugby. Today rugby and soccer are very different.

Thesports have taken different evolutionary pathways and each established officialrules and regulations to become organized sports around the early 1800s.