First, They Drink. Then They Fight Over a Ball. An English Town's Tradition.
In England, the Tuesday before lent is traditionally celebrated by eating a stack of pancakes.
But in Atherstone, a small town about 100 miles northwest of London, the locals gathered for a more bloody ritual: At 3 p.m. on the town's main street, a ball was thrown out of the second-story window of a mortgage broker's office, and dozens of men roared in unison as they piled on top of it.
They punched and shoved each other as they scrambled for the ball, eventually emerging from the scrum with road rash and swollen faces. One young player smiled at onlookers, revealing a mouth of bloodied braces.
This is the Atherstone Ball Game, an 826-year-old tradition in this Warwickshire town, and one of a dwindling number of ancient football games played across Britain on Shrove Tuesday, known as Fat Tuesday in the United States. King John is said to have initiated the town's first match, between Leicestershire and Warwickshire, in 1199. He offered a bag of gold for the winner, the story goes, creating a frenzied competition whose spirit lives on in today's game.
Locals often say there are only two rules to the game: Keep the ball on the town's main street, and don't kill anyone. In reality, there's a bit more to it than that, organizers say (and the no-killing rule is hyperbole).
But at its core, the game is simple. Participants kick and carry a leather ball up and down the city's main street for two hours. In the final minutes, they fight for possession of the ball until a klaxon sounds, ending the game.
The winner: whoever is holding the ball at the end.
To gain an advantage, many players organize teams out of local pubs, though in the end only one person can emerge victorious. Shoving, kicking, biting, punching — most uses of force, really — are fair game, particularly in the frantic final moments, said Noel Johnston, a 57-year-old retired factory worker who served as one of the game's chief marshals, a type of volunteer referee.
'This game is for men,' he said. (Though women are not barred from competing, they rarely do.)
On game day, 'friendships can be tested,' Mr. Johnston added, and 'everyone wants to be the alpha male.' Kyle Crawford, a 28-year-old who boxes in his spare time, said participating felt like the 'closest thing to getting into the ring.'
Ahead of the game, thousands squeezed along Long Street, the town's main thoroughfare, to watch the action unfold. Schoolchildren, who were given the day off for the occasion, clung to storefront windows that had been boarded up to prevent any damage. Police drones buzzed overhead. They, along with a few dozen officers, were there to monitor anyone who might use the game as 'an excuse for criminal violence,' the Warwickshire Police said.
As the game began and the scrum thrashed on the street, Ryan James, who oversaw first aid for the event, didn't seem worried. His company, Choice Response, brought eight medics and an ambulance.
'It looks quite brutal,' he said, but the most serious wounds he had treated by the end of the day were a minor concussion and a head gash — which he said initially made it look as if the victim 'had half of his head decapitated,' but turned out to be a minor laceration.
Throughout the afternoon, the onlookers played their own game of chicken with the action, gathering around the mass of competitors, only to run and scream when the ball got too close to them. Marshals paused the game every few minutes to let children kick the ball and pose for photos.
'The day itself is a family day,' said Rob Bernard, the chairman of the event's organizing committee. In the weeks leading up to the game, the ball is paraded around town to pubs, businesses and schools to drum up excitement and raise money for charity.
Folk football, as this type of game is known, began as a pagan ritual and laid the foundations for soccer and rugby, as well as American, Australian and Gaelic football, the author Desmond Morris wrote in his book 'The Soccer Tribe.'
While the tradition has died out in many places, it has remained a fixture in Atherstone, passed down through generations, said Pamela Colloff, who helps run the town's heritage center. Historically, the ballgames were a way for people to blow off steam, have fun and settle scores.
'For any sort of friction, it would be quite common to say, 'We'll sort that out on ballgame day,'' Ms. Colloff said. That was particularly true during the bitter miner's strike in the 1980s, she said, when workers on opposite sides of the strike found themselves facing off in the ballgame.
Mr. Johnston, the marshal, said many outsiders misunderstood the game, seeing its violence but not its boost to civic pride. The game was particularly important now, he said, as working-class English towns like Atherstone had been hollowed out. When he was younger, Atherstone was a bustling little town, he said, with a strong pub culture.
'Now, you could fire an AK-47 straight down the town at 9 o'clock on a Saturday night and shoot no one,' he said, adding an expletive. But not on ballgame day, he said while holding a pint in a pub that soon had a line flowing out the door.
'We've got to cling on to our traditions,' he said.
As the clock ran down on Tuesday, the game's chaotic roots surfaced. The ball was pinned under a group of players on a sidewalk, and the men began to swarm. Occasionally, someone would try to climb across the mob to get closer to the ball, crowd surfing on their competitors while also kicking and punching them.
At one point, a young man climbed onto the awning of a Costa Coffee shop to line up his next attack, but the structure buckled under his weight and he tumbled, along with a sheet of metal, onto the men below. The crowd cheered its approval.
Finally, the klaxon blew. Marcus Cooper, a 31-year-old construction worker who had spent 40 minutes at the bottom of the scrum, emerged as the winner. He was 'tired, but buzzing,' he said.
His prize? The ball, and the adoration of the town for the next 12 months.
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