Wait, let me try that again.

Ah, nevermind.

edited 10th May '13 7:29:34 AM by dRoy

Cadance can assume the shape of a football for long passes.

@edvedd: that one's going on the list.

Shining Armor: *holds up the Cadanceball* Does anyone have bigger balls than me? That's right, didn't think so.

Today: SPORTS!

You know what sport I imagine stallions play?

Australian Rules Football.

Hey, boys be boys; you gotta have something to let it allllll out.

I wonder what kind of major sports the ponies have? I'd been idly coming up for a ruleset for cloudball (8 pony teams - two defenders, two middle, two forward, one goalie and one 'runner' - similar passing rules to Rugby, and weather hazards), but I know we haven't ever seen any sport actually represented... do you think they have analogues for any human sports? Soccer seems like a good choice, and maybe hockey. Things that don't require hands.

@edvedd:

Did someone say hockey?

NHL is awesome.

@ keg

I'm counting on football existing.

Foster's reference

@Kegisak: We know they must have analogues for basketball and American football; there are ponies with cutie marks indicating such things.

But no boxing, wrestling, or other combat sports/martial arts. They have karate, but...well...let's say my opinion on karate as a martial art isn't exactly flattering.

/rant

Well let's hope we DO get an Equestrian Games episode and can see some of the events.

No I could see pony wrestling, and even boxing.. well kick boxing.

edited 10th May '13 7:52:15 AM by Seraphem

If I don't see Pankration during the Olympic episode, I will be pretty disappointed.

They have fencing, also. Though if I'd guess right, I imagine that falls into the same pitfalls as Karate, D roy? The one-tap-you're-out thing? Because honestly otherwise I'm not sure what the issue'd be, aside from that it's an extremely rigid style.

Can ponies play football. Can that happen?

American football, or European football?

@kegisak - I am not too fond of traditional strike-based martial arts in general because of so much emphasis on katas.

I will be fair, though; there are quite some kickboxers and MMA fighters with karate backgrounds so there must be at least few schools with more practical emphasis.

Soccer-football seems pretty much inevitable, since feet are all they've got.

I wonder how they'd even handle a hands rule. No mouth grabbing? No tails?

edited 10th May '13 8:05:23 AM by kegisak

MMA, ha. There's no discipline in MMA.

Only thing I can think of would be a general "no grabbing the ball" rule that would prevent telekinesis, tail grabbing, or picking up the ball with wings. There'd also probably be a "you have to stay on the ground" rule.

edited 10th May '13 8:01:50 AM by JapaneseTeeth

@ JT

European, and thank you for not using the 's' word.

I'm building a whole league for the Keys, with such teams as 'Trottingham United' (nick named Ham U), 'Trottingham City' (often shorted to just City) and...others.

@Red - I would like to argue that, but since it would be off-topic so I won't.

This is one rule that all sports have.

@D roy: Yeah, I can understand that. At different times in my life I've studied Judo and Karate(And taken one class of Tae Kwon Do, but I don't know how representative that is). Karate classes came down to doing Kata practice and various drills, whereas in Judo we basically warmed up by practicing throws(Well, after the actual stretching warmup of course), learned a new throw or two, and then did Judo for the rest of the class. OF course, differences in club mentality may account for that - my Judo Club always did well during competitions, I think because most of what we did was practical fighting, as opposed to just doing drills and practicing throws. The one class of Tae Kwon Do I took was mostly just practicing kicks, so... not hugely impressed there.

But yeah, I think if the mentality my Judo club had was applied to strike martial arts the end result would be much better, because... well, it's practical fighting, then. But the trouble is you can't really teach that and get away with it. In Judo the first few classes teach you how to minimize fall damage as much as possible, and they didn't actually let us do any throws until we had it down - the difference between white and yellow belt was that breakfalls became a reflex. Three years later, I'm pretty sure I'd still do them. In a strike martial art though... how do you advertise, "We're going to have your kids wail on each other non-stop for an hour."?

Also, some sports kinda revolve around grabbing the ball, so...

@Apple: And the Swindon Town Swoodilypoopers?

edited 10th May '13 8:07:39 AM by kegisak