13 Medieval Football
Workington, West Cumbria
Enjoyment - 50%
Success - 50%
Will try again - No
First timer's recommendation – go to a game after the clocks have gone forward for British Summer Time as you will get an extra hour of daylight viewing, and wear old clothes and shoes if you want to get involved.
I am now a quarter of the way through the year, and ticked off sport number 13 by mainly watching, but also getting involved with a game of Uppies & Downies. There are records of a game being played on the Cluffocks in Workington since 1775, and despite a recent threat from Tesco to develop on the land the game is played on, it has survived. At 6.30pm on Good Friday, a member of the Boyd family who sponsor the ball (three are made each year for the best of three series), throws the ball behind her head from the Cluffocks Bridge.
Despite being a pretty rough game, mainly played in a scrum in the beck, I didn't see any violence, and although the police were present they were having a quiet evening. Compare this to what happens regularly on a Sunday across the country during association football....
There were long periods where the ball was at the bottom of a slowly-moving maul, but then suddenly it would get thrown out and the players would all charge after it, and another mass scrum would begin.
The Uppies eventually 'hailed' by throwing the ball in the air three times at Curwen Hall (below, right), in the east of the town (the Downies goal being a capstan at the harbour in the west), and so took a one-nil lead in the best-of-three Easter series.
There are not many towns remaining where this sort of game is still played, most are Shrovetide games such as the one played Ashbourne in Derbyshire, St Columb in Cornwall has a 'Cornish Hurling' mass participation game, and there are a number of towns on the Scottish Borders and Orkney Isles where a Ba' Game takes place every year.
It's brilliant that the town keeps this tradition up, and there must have been close to 700 people playing or watching, of all ages, it's something you couldn't see happening in a town in the South-East.
