From British Bulldog and Red Rover to marbles, elastics and the fiercely contested game of downball, how many of these old schoolyard favourites do you remember?
There was a time when some of the fiercest sporting contests in Australia took place on two squares of schoolyard concrete, a patch of grass or a dusty corner of the playground.
No umpires and certainly no video replays. We made up half the rules ourselves, argued endlessly about the other half and somehow managed to squeeze entire sporting careers into a 40-minute lunch break.
All you needed was a tennis ball, a few marbles, some chalk or a handful of mates willing to play.
Some games have survived, others have largely disappeared, but I reckon plenty of you will remember this dozen.
Two squares of concrete, one tennis ball and two kids prepared to defend their honour to the death.
Downball was beautifully simple. Bounce the ball into your opponent’s square and try to make them miss, except nothing was ever that simple when a line ball was involved.
“That was out!”
“No it wasn’t!”
“Double bounce!”
Arguments could go on longer than the game itself. At my school, you could have a fiercely contested match underway within seconds of the lunchtime bell and losing to someone who’d been giving you cheek all morning was almost unbearable.
One kid in the middle, everybody else lined up at one end, waiting for the signal to run.
The idea was to make it to the other side without being caught, although what constituted a catch depended very much on where you went to school.
Some versions involved tagging. Others were considerably more physical, and the bigger kids generally enjoyed themselves enormously.
You’d be sprinting flat out, trying to dodge whoever was waiting in the middle, while your mates screamed encouragement from the sidelines. It was exhausting, occasionally painful and absolutely brilliant.
“Red Rover, Red Rover, send Johnny right over!”
Two lines of kids faced one another, holding hands, while some unfortunate soul was nominated to charge across and try to break through.
If you were little and the opposing line included a couple of particularly solid farm boys or footy/rugby kids, you knew you were in trouble.
The trick was finding the weakest link. Unfortunately, everyone else had usually worked that out too.
Do you remember the serious marble collectors?
Cat’s eyes, agates, steelies, tom bowlers and prized shooters, all carried around in little cloth bags or rattling away in trouser pockets.
There were rings scratched into the dirt, carefully lined-up shots and plenty of arguments over whether somebody had cheated.
And then came the question that could make or break a friendship.
“Are we playing for keeps?”
Losing a favourite marble was a childhood tragedy, especially when the kid who won it insisted on showing it off for the rest of the week.
Two kids stood with a long loop of elastic stretched around their ankles while a third jumped through a routine that seemed to become more complicated every time you watched.
Ankles, knees, thighs. Up went the elastic, and somehow the really good players kept clearing it.
Some kids were extremely talented at this. Their feet moved so quickly you could barely work out what they were doing.
Five little bones or playing pieces, a patch of ground and enough hand-eye coordination to make the rest of us look hopeless.
You tossed one into the air, scooped up others and caught the first before it landed. The combinations became progressively harder, and the really good players made it look ridiculously easy.
Older generations might remember using actual sheep knucklebones, while later versions came in little sets.
No batteries required, although a fair bit of patience certainly helped.
A piece of chalk, a stone and a few squares drawn on the concrete.
You threw your marker, hopped through the numbered squares, turned around and tried to retrieve it without falling over or putting a foot on the wrong line.
It looked easy until you were balancing on one leg, bending over to pick up a stone and suddenly realised gravity wasn’t on your side.
The chalk markings often stayed there for days, until rain or hundreds of school shoes finally wore them away.
If there was a football anywhere near the school oval, somebody would eventually suggest Forceback.
Two players or teams kicked the ball back and forth, trying to drive the opposition further and further towards their end.
A good kick could gain you plenty of ground. A poor one could undo ten minutes of hard work.
And if you had one kid who could roost the ball twice as far as everybody else, you generally wanted him on your side.
A chasing game involving a ball and the sort of frantic running that made the afternoon maths lesson particularly unpleasant.
Depending on your school’s rules, the person who was “it” had to hit another player with a ball, usually below the shoulders, before somebody else took over.
There was plenty of dodging, ducking and sprinting involved, especially when the kid with the strongest throwing arm got possession.
I suspect a few teachers were quite relieved when this particular game fell out of favour, especially at our school where we taped the tennis ball with gaffa tape!
“What’s the time, Mr Wolf?”
“Three o’clock!”
Everyone crept forward three steps.
“What’s the time, Mr Wolf?”
“Five o’clock!”
Another five steps.
And eventually came the answer everybody was waiting for.
“DINNERTIME!”
The wolf turned around and chased everyone, with children scattering in all directions and usually screaming their heads off.
Simple, silly and loads of fun, especially in the early primary-school years.
The more crowded cousin of downball, with four adjoining squares and a tennis ball that had usually seen better days.
King, Queen, Jack and Dunce were common positions, although schools had all sorts of names and rules.
The aim was to work your way up to the top square and stay there. Naturally, the King tended to be good at interpreting close decisions in his own favour.
And if you were stuck in the bottom square, you could spend an entire lunchtime waiting for your moment of glory.
A long rope, two kids turning it and a queue of others waiting for their chance.
There were rhymes, counting games, lots of squeals, and routines that became more complicated as you got older. Some children could jump in and out of a swinging rope without missing a beat.
Then there was Double Dutch, with two ropes turning in opposite directions.
Watching somebody who really knew what they were doing was something else. They could skip, jump, turn and keep a rhyme going while the rest of us struggled to get through three jumps without tripping.
Looking back, I loved how these games travelled from one generation of schoolchildren to the next.
Nobody handed us a rulebook. Older kids showed younger kids how to play, and by the time those younger kids became the big kids, they’d probably changed half the rules themselves.
Every school had its own variations.
I reckon if you put 10 former schoolkids in a room today and asked them to agree on the rules of British Bulldog, you’d still have an argument on your hands.
But downball was always my favourite example of just how seriously we took our lunchtime sport.
Two squares. One battered tennis ball. An opponent who was absolutely convinced you were cheating.
Then, right in the middle of a fiercely contested game, the bell would ring.
“Last point wins!”
Of course, that only started another argument.
Let me know any I’ve missed in the comments below!
This article is part of ‘Lessons That Last’, a new Starts At 60 series exploring the memories, traditions and school experiences that shape Australians across generations, presented in partnership with Schoolblazer Limited, a specialist school uniform company that works with hundreds of schools internationally. Through Lessons That Last, Starts At 60 is exploring the memories and experiences of school life across generations of Australians.
Comments 0
Join the conversation. Comments are reviewed before they appear.
Be the first to comment.
Join the conversation
Tell us who you are to post a comment. We'll remember you next time.