Winchester College football
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Winchester College football, also known as Winkies, is a code of football played at Winchester College in Hampshire, England. Its rules make it somewhat resemble rugby football but with a round football and little handling of the ball. It was once played in South Africa, but is now restricted to the community directly connected to Winchester College. The game's season is during the spring term from January to March, the second term of the academic year. It developed from an unstructured street game of the 17th century into a standardised sport by the early 19th century. This was first played on the top of St. Catherine's Hill with a line of junior boys down each side to keep the ball from rolling away. The game was moved to the College's playing fields, and the lines of boys were replaced with netting. The main game has teams of 15, but in smaller competitions the teams may be of 10 or 6 players.
Rules
The game somewhat resembles rugby football, as players can kick the ball or run with it.<ref name="Win Coll Sport"/> The players attempt to score by kicking the ball over the end of the pitch.Template:Sfn Tatler quotes a pupil's description of it as "our combination of football and rugby, likened to an English bulldog playing with a ball".<ref name="Tatler 2020">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The Financial Times commented that the game could substitute for the Ancient Greek game of Pankration, but that a "Kasparov-like mind" was necessary to cope with the ever-changing rules.<ref name="FT Pankration">Template:Cite news</ref> The aim of the game is to kick the ball (an over-inflated soccer football) into worms – the area at either end of canvas. Unlike in Rugby football, a player need only kick the ball across the worms line to score.<ref name="SCMP 2013"/>
The basic principle is that each team can only kick the ball once before the other team touches it (unless the kicker has been deemed to have kicked it his hardest).Template:Sfn The main rules are called tag, dribble, behind your side, and handiwork.<ref name="Notions 1901"/><ref name="Everything 2001"/>
- Tag occurs when a team-mate kicks the ball, and a man on his own team then kicks it without waiting for the other team to touch the ball. This means that passing forwards is not allowed.<ref name="Notions 1901"/><ref name="Everything 2001"/>
- Dribble occurs when the same man touches the ball twice when the ball has not gone backwards, unless he has first kicked it as hard as he can. This means that dribbling as in soccer is not allowed.Template:Sfn<ref name="Notions 1901"/><ref name="Everything 2001"/>
- Behind your side (a kind of offside rule) is designed to stop people loitering at some position up the pitch. Once a man on your team kicks the ball, the rest of the team must endeavour to get back to the point where he kicked the ball from (not just behind the kicker as in rugby football) before they can move forward up the pitch.<ref name="Everything 2001">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation
|CitationClass=web }}</ref>
- Handiwork is any illegal use of the hands. The rule allows somewhat more freedom than the handling rule in soccer. Only the kicks (full backs) may use their hands to control the ball. Any other player may catch the ball on the full toss, but use of the hands at any other time is deemed handiwork. A catch on the full toss by any player enables them to take up to three steps and then bust (punt) the ball.<ref name="Notions 1901"/><ref name="Everything 2001"/>
Breaking any of these rules means that play is brought one or two posts back for a hot (scrum). Once the ball is out of the hot, the "hotwatches" (scrum-halves) try to get the ball past the hot, either to kick the ball into worms, or to kick the ball into ropes (off the canvas, resulting in a hot where the ball went out).<ref name="SCMP 2013"/> Minor infringements result in a free bust.<ref name="Everything 2001"/>
The key points of the scoring system are that:
- A behind or 1 point is scored if the ball crosses into Worms after touching an opposition player or after going into ropes (between the rope and the netting), or if a team is awarded enough penalty Posts to send them back to worms (the final post along ropes).<ref name="Everything 2001"/>
- A conversion or 2 points is scored, following a behind, when an opposition kick from the point one metre in front of worms is returned by the team that scored the behind, and the ball crosses into worms; this converts the behind into a goal.<ref name="Everything 2001"/>
- A goal or 3 points is scored when the ball enters Worms without being touched by an opposition player and without being in ropes.<ref name="Notions 1901"/> After a goal is scored play resumes from a bust off.<ref name="Everything 2001"/>
The pitch
Winchester football is played on a pitch known as a canvas, 80 metres long and 15 metres wide, flanked on either side by 2.5 metre high netting (confusingly called the canvas as well; as is the squad for a winkies team<ref name="Axtell Fardell 2020">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>) designed to prevent balls from being kicked off the pitch. Approximately a metre in front of the netting and running parallel to it is a thick rope, supported at a height of one metre by nine stout posts at intervals along the canvas (or seven posts, as on some of the smaller pitches on Palmer Field). The distance between two adjacent posts is known as a post; hence the total length of the canvas is normally eight posts. The inaccessible area between the ropes and the netting is known as ropes. The goal area off each end of the pitch is known as worms.<ref name="SCMP 2013">Template:Cite news</ref>
Teams
Major matches are played with teams made up of 15 players, known as XVs;<ref name="Axtell Fardell 2020"/> other matches can be played with smaller teams, usually 6 or 10, known as VIs and Xs respectively. In VIs, there are two kicks (full-backs), one hotwatch (half-back) and three hot (scrum) players. In Xs, there are two kicks, three hotwatches and five hot players. In XVs there are three kicks, four hotwatches and eight hot players. The team sizes may differ sometimes in smaller house competitions, with IXs and XIs being common-place. The players' roles are as follows:<ref name="Garnett 2014"/>
- Kick: a defensive role between a full-back in Rugby football and a goalkeeper in soccer, the kick plays at the back of the field and may use their hands to control the ball.<ref name="Garnett 2014"/>
- Hotwatch: like a half-back in Rugby football, awaits the ball emerging from the hot, and may pass the ball backwards (without using their hands) or kick it forwards.<ref name="Garnett 2014"/>
- Hot: like the scrum in Rugby football, pushes against the other team's hot, and attempts to heel the ball back to their hotwatches, or to keep the ball in the hot and advance up the field. When the members of the hot are not in an actual scrum, they kick the ball.<ref name="Garnett 2014"/>
Major matches are played between three teams, called Old Tutor's Houses (OTH), Commoners, and College. OTH wear brown and white striped zephyrs (football shirts), and consist of pupils from Furley's, Toye's, Cook's, Chawker's, and Hopper's boarding houses. Commoners wear red and white striped zephyrs, and consist of pupils from Kenny's, Freddie's, Phil's, Trant's, and Beloe's. College wear blue and white striped zephyrs, and consist only of pupils from College, the scholars' institution.<ref name="Garnett 2014">Template:Cite journal</ref>
History
<imagemap> File:Winchester College map.svg|thumb|upright=1.75|right|Sketch map of Winchester College, with clickable links. The game was once played on St Catherine's Hill, and then on Meads (inside the college walls) or outside on fields including Ridding Meads and Kingsgate Park. All locations and building outlines are diagrammatic.
rect 100 10 600 100 Winchester rect 650 10 800 150 Winchester Cathedral rect 900 300 1050 450 Wolvesey Castle rect 600 400 900 600 Winchester College rect 500 500 650 650 Winchester College War Cloister rect 700 700 900 900 River Itchen, Hampshire rect 400 650 800 1092 Ridding Meads rect 800 850 1000 1092 St Catherine's Hill, Hampshire
rect 10 10 1056 1092 commons:File:Winchester College map.svg </imagemap>
In the 17th century, Winchester football was played in Kingsgate Street; each team attempted to move a football from one end to the other, with little in the way of rules. The game was then moved away from the College to the flat, grassy top of St. Catherine's Hill. The game persisted with few rules, but required a long line of kickers-in, junior boys, on both sides of the pitch to keep the ball from rolling away down the hillsides.Template:Sfn<ref name="Garnett 2014"/>
By about 1825, the rules had been standardised and matches with large teams of 22 players, 20 in the hot (scrum) and 2 behinds (backs) were played between College (the scholars resident in the school's medieval buildings) and Commoners.Template:Sfn<ref name="Houlihan Green 2010">Template:Cite book</ref> The fundamental rules of "dribble" and "tag" were added at this stage. By 1860, the game was moved from the top of St. Catherine's Hill to where it is played now, on Meads.Template:Sfn<ref name="Jackson 2018">Template:Cite journal</ref> The lines of kickers-in were then replaced by canvas sheets, resulting in the name "canvas" for the football pitch, and soon afterwards by netting to allow people to watch the game without the aid of a ladder.Template:Sfn
By 1901, teams had been reduced to 15, with 8 in the hot, 3 "hotwatchers" (scrum-halves), and 3 "behinds".<ref name="Notions 1901">Template:Harvnb</ref>
The earliest evidence of coloured shirts used to identify football teams comes from Winchester football: an image from before 1840 is entitled "The commoners have red and the college boys blue jerseys."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The use of coloured shirts at Winchester College was confirmed again in 1859: "Precisely at twelve o'clock, according to good old custom, the blue jerseys of college and the red of commoners mingled in the grand commencing 'hot'."<ref>Bell's Life in London and Sporting Chronicle (London, England), Sunday, November 14, 1858</ref> That same year, Winchester College played a match of an undefined variety of football against the Winchester Garrison Officers; 28 "goals" were scored, with 11 players on each side, leading the historian Ian Denness to suggest that the rules were a hybrid of the Winchester and Eton football games.<ref name="Curry 2019">Template:Cite book</ref>
Winchester College football was the first variety of football that was played in South Africa, promoted by Canon Gorge Ogilvie, principal of the Diocesan College in Rondebosch; it remained dominant until 1878.<ref name="Win Coll Sport">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>Template:Sfn<ref name="Hamilton RFC">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
In 1941, General Archibald Wavell, an alumnus of Winchester (an Old Wykehamist), was congratulated by telegram for his success in pushing the Italian 10th Army back in North Africa with the words "hotting the enemy over worms" (pushing the hostile scrum back over the goal line).Template:Sfn In 1996, another Old Wykehamist, John Whittingdale, speaking in Parliament in a debate on sport, said that "at school, I was forced to play a weekly game of fives, as well as a peculiarly brutal game known as Winchester College football, which normally resulted in substantial injuries to the participants."<ref name="Hansard 1996">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In the 21st century, Winchester College football has become known as Winkies.<ref name="Winkies Independent">Template:Cite news</ref> An older Winchester college notion for it is "Win Co Fo".<ref name="Jackson 2018"/>
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Illustration of Winchester football by Richard Baigent, 1838, showing lines of "kickers-in" on both sides of the pitch on Ridding Meads. St. Catherine's Hill, where the game was once played, is in the background.
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A "Hot" in a game of 22-a-side Winchester football in Meads, by R. B. Mansfield, 1866
See also
References
Sources
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