(Soccer, that is.)

With the World Cup around the corner, I've published a blog post on my GH Editorial website about some quirks in the game's terminology. Hope you enjoy it.

With Super Bowl Sunday coming up, this video from the Library of Congress gives us a grainy glimpse at what American football looked like in a different era. This clip, featuring the Princeton and Yale university teams playing in New Haven, Connecticut, is thought to be the oldest surviving footage of college football, which was generally seen as the highest level of the game in those pre-NFL times, when professional play was largely frowned upon.
 
As you can see, things were a bit different back then.
 
Forward passing wasn’t yet allowed, and lateral or backward passing had gone out of fashion back in the 1880s, when blocking became acceptable. When a player was carrying the ball, his team-mates’ main priority was to clear a path for him, not to run alongside or behind him and look for a pass.
 
This is one thing that distinguishes the game we see here from rugby (the sport that American football originated from in the 1870s), in which the blockers would have been offside. Another is that the system of downs and yardage was in place, with the teams having to separate and line up onside after each tackle. But, rather than needing to gain ten yards in four downs as in today’s game, the team in possession needed just five yards from three downs.
 
These factors all combined to encourage the kind of football we can see in this clip – with most plays apparently consisting of little more than a pile-up. This style of play had its dark side, with not only injuries but even deaths becoming commonplace. Protective gear was in its infancy: players wore little in the way of padding, some wore rudimentary helmets, and some used nose guards.
 
There would be 18 fatalities and 159 serious injuries recorded in 1905 alone, creating a crisis that soon led to the introduction of forward passing, the neutral zone (a gap between the opposing sets of players at the start of each play) and a requirement to gain ten yards rather than five. Playing styles would still change only slowly – but, gradually, over the next few decades, the game would come to resemble the one we know today.

The 2017 update of A Devilish Pastime is available now on Amazon. Please visit the Buy page to find a link to the book's Amazon page for your country.

An updated, re-edited and generally revamped version of A Devilish Pastime is in the pipeline, hopefully to become available no later than February. I also intend to add some fresh, interesting content to this website, including links to videos relevant to the book. More news to follow ...

A Devilish Pastime is available in epub format via Smashwords again, and should soon be available in various formats via other outlets. It is no longer in the Kindle Owners' Lending Library.

A Devilish Pastime is available FREE in Kindle format this weekend, until 8am GMT on Monday.

A Devilish Pastime has been enrolled into Amazon's KDP Select programme, making it eligible for the Kindle Owners' Lending Library. It will stay in this programme until at least the end of March. For as long as this continues, the ebook will not be available from other retailers.

With a bit of reluctance, I've decided to withdraw the epub edition of A Devilish Pastime from Smashwords's retail partners (Kobo, Sony Reader Store, etc.), and I will soon withdraw it from Smashwords itself, in order to make it eligible for Amazon's KDP Select programme.

I don't particularly like the idea of treating Amazon as the only outlet for ebooks, but the reality of the situation seems to make this the best bet.