21 May 2014

Three-sided football explained

Mark Dyson, the founder of Deptford Three Sided Football Club (D3FC), told me the game taking place in front of my eyes was not as bizarre as it seemed. “The rules are very simple – and there are only three of them.” They are:
1. There must be three teams on the field at the same time
2. The winning team is the one that concedes the fewest goals
3. The ball must be round 
Danish situationist, artist and philosopher Asger Jorn came up with the idea of three sided football. “Jorn felt that the dualistic antagonisms of the East/West political dialectic could be ameliorated through the introduction of a tertiary power which would engender a rotational series of shifting alliances to neutralise the tension”. 
Further details at The Guardian and at the club's website.

9 comments:

  1. I've played 3 team baseball before, which is a way to play ball with fewer people. You have 3 teams of 4 or 5 players and all other rules are normal. Gives people a chance to play different field positions and everyone feels like a teammate. You can choose to ignore traditional batting order and have whomever is not on base hit, or switch out base running.

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  2. Isn't that a 3 sided Soccer field?

    Played gang-up softball once. Any number of runners could stand on a plate at a time, if you have a bad pitcher yuo inevitably have 4 people running from 1st base to homeplate at the same time (have to tag the runner). Slow running bad hitters get to steal home.

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  3. Thanks for calling football by its real name.

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  4. Hehe thanks Paulo. Yes Football.

    As a previous player of both 11-a-side football and 5-a-side football (tactically very different games). This is something I have never heard of (the closest thing being 3-sided chess) and sounds very interesting. The idea of 'not the best team (skillfully) will win', but he best team at managing inter relationships, bluffing and team work, with a second team, may produce a winner, but which winner from the two colluding teams, will actually be top... results in a lot of.. thinking, planning and maybe devious scheming. Very interesting Stan thanks

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  5. Thanks for posting about this: it is now my second favorite variation of the game, after swamp football, of course!
    (Apparently there is no Belgian or Dutch team yet, so I also blogged about it in Dutch here.)

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  6. "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly."

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  7. “Jorn felt that the dualistic antagonisms of the East/West political dialectic could be ameliorated through the introduction of a tertiary power which would engender a rotational series of shifting alliances to neutralise the tension”.

    Victoria Oceania !

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    Replies
    1. Yup. That had both Newspeak and Overwokenness plastered all over it.

      Lurker111

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