Dave’s Football Blog

Tell the truth. You don’t want to be inside watching the NFL Draft today. You want to head out to the beach, don’t you?

Ah, yes, the beach. The smell of the ocean. The wind in your hair. The sand in your shorts. That urine stench rising up from your leg because a jellyfish stung you and your buddy sprung into action with the ol’ “number one cure,” even though that episode of Friends was actually a damn, dirty lie…

And yet you can’t leave your football behind, can you? The ocean calls, but so does the game, even when there aren’t any actual games being played. Have no fear. At the edge of the ocean, you can find football again — no matter what type of football you prefer.

Beach Soccer

Association football is beach-tested and, believe it or not, FIFA-approved. Yes, in 2005, 13 years after a group called Beach Soccer Worldwide drew up the first set of rules, FIFA gave the game of beach soccer proper recognition as an official football game, and every year FIFA and BSWW organize the FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup, a competition that’s been dominated by Brazil since its inception as the Beach Soccer World Championships in 1995. Of course, the game was created in Brazil, so it’s no surprise that they kick sand in everyone else’s faces.

The game plays a bit like futsal on sand. It’s 5-on-5 with rolling substitutions on a pitch that’s about 35-to-37 meters long and 26-to-28 meters wide. Official matches are split into three 12-minute periods. There’s no offside rule, and the ability to shoot at goal from anywhere leads to high-scoring matches. There’s a shot on goal every 30 seconds on average, and there’s usually a goal scored every 3 minutes. Goalies have it rough in this game.

Oh, and there are no draws in beach soccer. You play a sudden death overtime period to determine the winner, and it goes to penalty kicks if nobody scores a golden goal. Works for me.

Beach Flag Football

Perhaps you prefer your football to be more of the gridiron variety. Well, the US Beach Flag Football Association has just the game for you. It’s a 6-on-6 co-ed football game that plays a lot like backyard football. You can’t draw a grid in the sand, so you have to complete two forward passes for a first down. It’s right there in the rules.

The USBFFA — and isn’t that abbreviation entertaining? — organizes league play and tournaments in Virginia Beach every summer. (Mmmmmm… Virginia Beach…) If you think you’ve got a team that can run with the best of them, go enter that tourney, and remember, if they can’t get your flag, they can’t get you. Barry Sanders said it, I believe it, and that settles that.

Beach Rugby

If you spend more time on the beaches of Italy, England or Australia than the beaches in Virginia, chances are you’ve seen some of the locals playing the type of football that doesn’t permit forward passes. Beach rugby patterns itself after rugby league in that there’s no rucking or mauling, and even scrums are replaced with something called a “tap kick,” depending on where you play. There are no goalposts, either, so all you can score are tries.

Some play a sort of flag rugby on the beach, while the Italians have a 3-second rule, where you have to give up the ball within three seconds after getting wrapped up by an opponent. NRL stars in Australia play in a Beach Footy tournament during the offseason that’s low-contact and known more for the babes than the game, which sounds about right for a beach event.

The pitch is similar in size to a beach soccer pitch, with end zones about 3-to-7 meters deep. Teams consist of 5-to-7 players on the sand at a time, with on-the-fly substitutions. Matches are really short, consisting of two halves only 5-to-7 minutes long, so it resembles rugby sevens in that regard. You could play a full beach rugby tournament in an afternoon if you wanted.

Beach Footvolley

Of course, if you want something completely different, try this on for size — a volleyball game in which you can’t use your hands. Yes, football and volleyball collide in the game of footvolley, which was born in Brazil and is all the rage in Rio de Janeiro and Miami. You could almost think of it as competitive kemari, since the object is to keep the ball in the air as long as possible.

The U.S. Footvolley Team leads the way in this country, organizing national tournaments in South Florida fairly often. Several big time footballers have been known to indulge in a little footvolley, though, including Ronaldo and Roberto Carlos. Because the sport is Brazilian in nature, footvolley tournaments tend to draw samba bands on the sidelines, and you know what that means — dancing girls at the games. I can get with that.

Of course, if you want to attract the hotties on the beach, any kind of football will do. Just ask Jessica Alba…

Yes, I think we need more beach football in our lives. Wouldn’t you agree?

Trackback URI | Comments RSS