Disturbing Trend in UA and Snuff: **Major Spoilers**

[high eight]

Well, H8, since you ask:
It could be virtually everything.
Just something a number of people can obsess over.
And as there is little to no actual footballplaying going on in the book and the rules are a jumbled mess of various incarnations of the game throughtout time, why should it matter if it weren't football but just a random made-up game.
It is the framing for the fan-scene-substory, so 'inventing' a new sport would/could have likely been easier all together. It wouldn't even, as said, have needed to be a sport.
Just something a number people can obsess over.

Association football is the most popular game in Europe, Latin and South America and Africa. Any other game wouldn't have the impact.

And the rules of the match as played at the end of the book are pretty much the modern FIFA rules.

[David Brown]

This is meant as a rhetorical question, so please don't feel you actually have to answer it.

When football is such a convenient illustration of the tribal mentality, and it has taken so many different forms over the years, why should Pratchett pick a different sport, or make a new one up? As for an amalgam of several games, it might be justifiably said that that is exactly what he has given us, only instead of being made up from various games played now, it's a conglomeration of many types of football, all played in separate times, and even places. After all, Association Football, in it's earliest form, came about because you had to have one set of rules that everyone knew, not have one team playing to one set, the other to a second, and the referee trying to enforce a third.

[LilMaibe]

H8, please go to the fifa page and read the rules.
If what was used in the book would have been anywhere near the fifa rules, even if we leave out the stuff the orc (of course him, who else could ever have any new idea) comes up with after the match, then
-Andy would have been sent off the field after he tackled Macarona (he admitted doing so, if a player actually does that it doesn't matter whether or not the referee saw it). (Why was tackling allowed in the first play in the book? Well, it goes with the rest of the world's perception of England not having yet gotten it into their heads they aren't playing rugby)
-If Andy, with his big boots would have been allowed in the game to begin with.
-There would have been the kick-off (term?) from the keeper after a goal, not having the team who scored get the ball.
-One of the goals would have clearly been off-side (the one where it's said that Macarona was the only one near the other team's goal, aside from the keeper)
-There would have been a clear definition of what a ball has to look like and not that very-plot-convenient-thingy.

In short: If the rules would have been anywhere near the Fifa rules, there would have been no game.

[high eight]

H8, please go to the fifa page and read the rules.
If what was used in the book would have been anywhere near the fifa rules, even if we leave out the stuff the orc (of course him, who else could ever have any new idea) comes up with after the match, then
-Andy would have been sent off the field after he tackled Macarona (he admitted doing so, if a player actually does that it doesn't matter whether or not the referee saw it). (Why was tackling allowed in the first play in the book? Well, it goes with the rest of the world's perception of England not having yet gotten it into their heads they aren't playing rugby)
-If Andy, with his big boots would have been allowed in the game to begin with.
-There would have been the kick-off (term?) from the keeper after a goal, not having the team who scored get the ball.
-One of the goals would have clearly been off-side (the one where it's said that Macarona was the only one near the other team's goal, aside from the keeper)
-There would have been a clear definition of what a ball has to look like and not that very-plot-convenient-thingy.

In short: If the rules would have been anywhere near the Fifa rules, there would have been no game.

I did say 'pretty much' and could have (But didn't, thinking it obvious) added 'except for vagaries as required by the plot' - Don't be so damned pedantic.

[high eight]

oh, and I am now leaving this thread. Again. I don't want to get involved in pointless argument. Again.

[stripy_tie]

Why should he invent a new sport?, Pratchett is at heart a satirist, he likes taking apart concepts, traditions, ideas, institutions, people e.t.c so that he can show people how they work and what they're made of and then he puts them back together again in wonderful new ways.

It's in every last one of his books, he'll either be exploring a concept or making fun of something and most of the time it's both.

In UA it's football, he's a writer for christs sake this is what he does, he doesn't have to like what he's exploring just to understand it and find something about it interesting.

I'm with high eight, I won't debate with you to just have every piece of proof and logical reasoning I produce to back up my arguments simply ignored, it's intellectually insulting.

I'm sorry you don't want to be a part of this community.

[LilMaibe]

I'm with high eight, I won't debate with you to just have every piece of proof and logical reasoning I produce to back up my arguments simply ignored, it's intellectually insulting.

I'm sorry you don't want to be a part of this community.

Yeah, cause I hate ALL of the books with a burning passion and am just here to say how bad all of them are...
It's ONE book, folks. One book that I dislike because it helds non of the elements I value and love about Discworld and Sir Terry's writing in general.
But tell me, please, does disliking one book out of so many really mean one doesn't want to be part of the community?

EDIT:
I am sorry I have to repeat myself, but the impression I constantly got was that people don't cared about why I dislike the book, but solely for that I dared to dislike it.
And H8, you asked for an answer, I gave you one.
I am not ignoring you people's reasoning, but I keep getting the vibe that you ignore mine, just because they aren't full of praise.
I would really love to close this case and bury the hatchet as I do love Sir Terry's writing and Discworld in general (ust not UA (along with a negative impression of Snuff, which I read by now, if not completely))) but when I feel people take me for a fool because they don't like my opinion that is pretty hard.

[alicenanjing]

I don't know much about football, but it does seem to me that the type of game is not so important in this book. What is important is that there is something that can act like a more or less bloodless substitute for war, that can polarize loyalties and turn individual people into members of one of several rival groups, and that can generate the existential, quasi-religious experience of the Shove. It doesn't even need to be a game - being a member of some activist group, like militant ecologists for instance, or anti-war or whatever, offers much the same elements. It just calls for more brains and education, and so can't develop into the same mass movement.

[Tonyblack]

I don't know much about football, but it does seem to me that the type of game is not so important in this book. What is important is that there is something that can act like a more or less bloodless substitute for war, that can polarize loyalties and turn individual people into members of one of several rival groups, and that can generate the existential, quasi-religious experience of the Shove. It doesn't even need to be a game - being a member of some activist group, like militant ecologists for instance, or anti-war or whatever, offers much the same elements. It just calls for more brains and education, and so can't develop into the same mass movement.

Exactly!

I don't like football (or any other sport), but to me, it's not about the game, it's about what it generates.

It's not a history of football as played on Earth, it's a game that bears some resemblances to football, played on a fictitious world with fictitious characters.

The important part of the story is the way people claim the colours of the team and use them to justify hatred of other groups wearing different colours. It's as you pointed out, a substitute for war.

[alicenanjing]

Well, that was not my idea, it's actually Vetinari that makes the association, somewhere in the book - in the first half, I think. Thanks for the compliment.

[DaveC]

Many defend the book by saying 'it is not about football' to which I can only say, if it were truly just for how fans can be, why not pick a different sport,

Like what? Baseball? Totally unknown outside the USA and Japan. American football? Somewhat despised outside the USA (in Britain at least) and I doubt if Terry knows much about either. The only other option would be cricket and that wouldn't go down very well outside the cricket-playing countries, would it?

Weirdly, I have at least 20 friends, not all firends with each other who obsessively follow the American Football season! Maybe it's an increasing boredom with the state of football over here

H8, please go to the fifa page and read the rules.
If what was used in the book would have been anywhere near the fifa rules, even if we leave out the stuff the orc (of course him, who else could ever have any new idea) comes up with after the match, then
-Andy would have been sent off the field after he tackled Macarona (he admitted doing so, if a player actually does that it doesn't matter whether or not the referee saw it). (Why was tackling allowed in the first play in the book? Well, it goes with the rest of the world's perception of England not having yet gotten it into their heads they aren't playing rugby)
-If Andy, with his big boots would have been allowed in the game to begin with.
-There would have been the kick-off (term?) from the keeper after a goal, not having the team who scored get the ball.
-One of the goals would have clearly been off-side (the one where it's said that Macarona was the only one near the other team's goal, aside from the keeper)
-There would have been a clear definition of what a ball has to look like and not that very-plot-convenient-thingy.

In short: If the rules would have been anywhere near the Fifa rules, there would have been no game.

Shall we list the ways that film-making in Moving Pictures is not like film-making in real life?

I don't blame you for not liking the book, it's my second least favourite after Making Money, but I let go of that and it happily sits there in chronology with the rest of the books on the shelf. Everyone has their off days (books). Take Speilberg and Hook.... Nuff said...

[LilMaibe]

Shall we list the ways that film-making in Moving Pictures is not like film-making in real life?

Point taken and I'm aware. H8 said, though, that the rules that are in the book are pretty much the fifa rules. Yet, none of those applies. Not even 'pretty much' So, isn't it basically this? As in,we have a game that isn't really football but we call it football for some reason? (ranging from 'to make people have something familiar' to 'to cash in on the world/european cups' )

[pip]

Shall we list the ways that film-making in Moving Pictures is not like film-making in real life?

Point taken and I'm aware. H8 said, though, that the rules that are in the book are pretty much the fifa rules. Yet, none of those applies. Not even 'pretty much' So, isn't it basically this? As in,we have a game that isn't really football but we call it football for some reason? (ranging from 'to make people have something familiar' to 'to cash in on the world/european cups' )

any game involving a ball and feet comes to be called football . The name and game forms long predate the FA and FIFA rules . The mob idea fits into the old town vs town old style of mass football. Using the name doesn't make it the game we all know now. More important than the game in the book is the mentality and the attempt to tame it .

[LilMaibe]

Shall we list the ways that film-making in Moving Pictures is not like film-making in real life?

Point taken and I'm aware. H8 said, though, that the rules that are in the book are pretty much the fifa rules. Yet, none of those applies. Not even 'pretty much' So, isn't it basically this? As in,we have a game that isn't really football but we call it football for some reason? (ranging from 'to make people have something familiar' to 'to cash in on the world/european cups' )

any game involving a ball and feet comes to be called football . The name and game forms long predate the FA and FIFA rules . The mob idea fits into the old town vs town old style of mass football. Using the name doesn't make it the game we all know now. More important than the game in the book is the mentality and the attempt to tame it .

A mentality that could have been applied to, as said, virtually everything.
(BTW: Recently watched a documentary about the medieval football in florence. It was amazing)
The whole 'tame it' bit brings up a new problem, though. Before UA football or whatever you wanted to call it was remotely tame. See the compendium fo details.
Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't even folklore still rolling with what the compendium says about the game?

[Dotsie]

A mentality that could have been applied to, as said, virtually everything.

Well, why shouldn't the book be about football? A British audience would immediately understand the loyalties concept without it being spelled out, and Terry is a British writer, and I should think that the majority of his readership is British too.

And Maibe, we all accept that you don't like this book, but what annoys everyone is that YOU KEEP GOING ON ABOUT IT. And that is really annoying.