Strange English Customs: The Ashbourne Royal Shrovetide Football Game

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Something in England’s soil nurtures bizarre traditions, from the soberly political (think Black Rod) to the brutally folkloric. The Ashbourne Royal Shrovetide football game belongs to the second category, and it puts the emphasis on brutal. 

What could possibly be more fun?

Basically, we’re talking about a mass football game that runs for two days. That’s eight hours each day. One article claims it has only two rules, you can’t move the ball in a motorized vehicle and you can’t murder anyone, but don’t take that too seriously. It has other rules, but not murdering anyone is important. It’s that kind of game. Although I’m not sure that’s a rule. One of the assorted articles I read says “unnecessary violence” is frowned on but it’s not banned. It doesn’t mention murder.

Irrelevant photo: a romantic-looking shed door.

 

Sounds like fun. How do I play?

It helps if you’re from Ashebourne, because the town divides into teams according to which side of the river you’re born on. Outsiders can throw themselves in on whichever side they want, but they’d be wise to be (a) large and (b) young enough to heal well. And probably male. I haven’t seen any women in the photos, and wild-eyed feminist that I am, I’m not about to campaign my way into this. Look at it this way: If a group of men decide to do something insanely stupid, being a feminist doesn’t mean I’ll join them in the name of equality. If someone else wants to, I’ll cheer her on, but I’ll do it from the sidelines. 

Here’s how the game works: Someone lets a ball loose in the middle of town and everyone tries to get hold of it, so it immediately turns into a shoving match involving hundreds of people. Odds are that for at least part of the time most of the players won’t have a clue where the ball is, so they’ll shove whoever’s closest and trust it contributes to the greater good. Or that it doesn’t, but at a certain point instinct takes over and who cares? Players get lifted off their feet. They get squeezed until they see stars–which actually does happen when your body doesn’t get enough oxygen. They get broken ribs, broken other things, bruises, black eyes, and injuries to any part of the human body that’s injurable.

The object is to get the ball to the opposite team’s goal–it’s a millstone–and the goals are three miles apart, so the rule about not using motorized transportation begins to make sense. Once you get it there, you hit the ball three times against the stone to score a point. 

It sounds like you need to jump in the river to do that. (See? There are rules.)

Then your teammates carry you back to the town center on their shoulders and if you made your goal before 6 pm, the whole thing starts over with a new ball and the game runs until 10. If it’s after 6, then play’s over for the day and everyone heads for the pub, where people buy you drinks. 

People will be buying you drinks for weeks to come, and you get to keep the ball, which is handmade and hand painted.

On the second day, everyone who isn’t too hung over does it all again.

 

And if I don’t want to play?

You’d be wise to stay well out of the way, because onlookers can get swept into the mayhem, as one reporter was, losing his notebook but gaining some experience in the process. At some point, someone grabbed him by the hood and yanked him out. 

The mob is called the hug and it isn’t entirely in anyone’s control, but it’s powerful. When I read about it knocking over walls, I thought I was reading a bit of poetic exaggeration. Then I saw a photo of a brick wall that had been pushed over. The reporter who lost his notebook wrote about the hug barreling through a barbed wire fence. Shops (wisely) board up their windows. 

And pubs? They sell a lot of beer. 

 

The history

No one knows how the tradition started, but that doesn’t stop people from making it up. According to one theory, it started with an execution. The severed head was thrown into the crowd (of course) and the fun began. You can choose to believe that if you like. No one can prove you wrong.

Or right, but that doesn’t bother people as much as it used to.

The game can be documented as far back as the seventeenth century but probably started long before. A fire wiped out the town records, so that’s as far back as we go. The medieval period’s not an irrational guess. 

A couple of other English towns have similar games at Shrovetide, but most places settle for running around flipping pancakes and seeing who crosses the finish line first.

 

What’s Shrovetide?

The days before Lent. And Lent is the days before Easter, the soberest holiday in the Christian calendar. You needed a Jewish atheist to explain that to you, right? As far as I can figure it out, the medieval approach to Lent was for people to give up everything they enjoyed–meat, dairy products, eggs. Sex. They’d eat one meal a day. 

People were supposed to go to confession at Shrovetide and do all that sober stuff in preparation for Lent. But flipping pancakes and shoving your neighbors through a barbed wire fence and into the river? That also makes sense as a preparation for a somber season. 

 

Mayhem and community spirit

Local people will swear that the point of the game is community spirit. “It’s the lifeblood of the town,” an Ashebournian told the reporter who lost his notebook to the hug. “The media focuses on the fighting, but that’s all forgotten the moment the game ends. The real legacy is how it brings people together.”

Backing that up, a different reporter got a quote from a local businesswoman: “It looks like Armageddon. It’s knee-deep in litter, there’s stuff everywhere piled up in the doorways, in the road.” But after the second day, “all the players will be out mending fences, they’ll help you take your boards down, they’ll be picking up litter, because they want it to continue the next year.” 

36 thoughts on “Strange English Customs: The Ashbourne Royal Shrovetide Football Game”

  1. I checked to make sure that it was the Ashbourne that I’ve driven through on many occasions and it is. It’s been a while, but I seem to remember narrow streets (there’s a one-way system) and a bit of a hill. I’ve never really noticed the river. I’m not in the least bit surprised that they play a game like this and I’m not surprised that it takes two days, as they’d have to change ends.

    Tudor? They went in for all kinds of brutality then.

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    • Some article–with or without evidence–guessed medieval. I think that’s the origin–or at least believed to be the origen–of similar games. Knowing that the streets are narrow sharpens my picture of the mayhem. Thanks for adding that.

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      • Football was played in the streets in the Middle Ages and I don’t think there were any rules. Violence was a feature, but not, I think, an objective, which seems to be the case in Ashbourne.

        Now I’m thinking about a novel in which someone is murdered during a game of football and everyone thinks it was an accident.

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        • That’s a reasonably credible plot.

          For all the damage done, to property and bodies, I don’t know that violence is the point. I get the impression it’s more like–um, a necessary tool. And, I expect, a handy valve to let off a bit of life’s pressures. I’m grateful not to be in the middle of that mess, though. My prefered safety valves are cake and caffeine.

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  2. Reading the fest, there’s a certain similarity with the bull running on the Azores. All the men of a town crowd round a rather confused young bull, all the women retreat to the first floor of the houses. After much pushing and shoving, men and bull get to the end of the town. This takes hours. And towns are tiny- even the smallest English village will be larger.

    I’ve never been to one- but videos seem to be on repeat at most Island airports. They are actually very funny for all the wrong reasons.

    Liked by 1 person

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  3. I needed a break from the awful news and this was it. Maybe two days of communal brutality and then fixing up the fences exorcizes the impulse to actually kill the perceived enemy and symbolizes amends. Maybe? I’m hanging on a thread here.

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  11. This sounds like a schoolyard game us boys would play which we called ‘kill the guy with the ball’. In this game a football was kicked in the middle of a bunch of classmates, whoever could would grab the ball and run. This person would continue to run until he was tackled to the turf. Once tackled he would kick the ball high and the melee would begin again. I’m not aware of any other rules. Perhaps the original game arrived via Ashbourne. I personally found the game a thrill, I loved to run in just my socks as the material worked well in gripping to the Bermuda grass for agile escapes.

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          • I like where you are heading with this. Good thinking! If they reconsider the grades as a whole, what about botany and anatomy? Our blood and bones spattered across the playfield surely would apply to both of those fields of study! I think you could speak for many a miscreant youth of my acquaintance in this endeavor!

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