It all began during a regular soccer match at Rugby School in England when 16-year-old William Webb Ellis picked up the football and ran away with it. Now anyone familiar with the game of football or soccer would know that handling the ball is against the rules. Doing so, in fact, results in a penalty or handball infringement allowing the opposing team to get a penalty kick that is usually converted into a goal, too.

But ironically the boy’s disregard for the rules on that afternoon in 1823 was seen as something new and ingenious. And it wasn’t long before the whole school adopted the new move making it okay to run with the ball towards the goal and in the process giving birth to the game of rugby, named after the school where it first happened, of course.

The ball used in rugby today is oval or oblong as sometime later it was felt that running off with a ball would be easier if it was oval, which the player could also stash under his arm. Rugby today is a major world sport and its inventor, William Webb Ellis, somewhat of a celebrity with historians. The Rugby School even has a headstone that says: “The stone commemorates the exploit of William Webb Ellis who with a fine disregard for the rules of football, as played in his time, first took the ball in his arms and ran with it, thus originating the distinctive feature of the rugby game. AD1823”.

Rugby is but only one example of a variation of football that emerged as a sport in its own right. There are so many other sports out there that also originated from football. This article will try and acquaint you with some of the most popular ones.

Futsal

Futsal, an indoor version of football, is also fast gaining popularity across the world. More of a court game than a field sport, it requires a much smaller pitch (38 to 42 metres in length and 18 to 25 metres in width), a smaller but heavier ball and is played with only five players per side.

The game was invented in 1930 in Montevideo, Uruguay, when sick and tired of having to play on grounds left soggy by the rains Juan Carlos Ceriani, a football coach, asked his team to practice indoors. That was also when he made some changes to the rules in order to add fun to the game while it was played inside and in a much smaller place than an open ground.

The form soon caught the imagination of youngsters all over South America where it got the name of “futbol sala” meaning room or indoor football. In Brazil it became known as “futebol de salao” and going global it simply became futsal.

The International Federation for Futebol de Sala (FIFUSA) was founded in Brazil in 1971 with the first Futsal World Championship happening in Sao Paolo in 1982. Futsal today is played all over the world and has even been taken over by the world football body FIFA. Not being able to ignore its popularity, Pakistan Football Federation (PFF), too, has jumped on to the futsal court. The first national futsal championship in Pakistan is all set to take place at the Liaquat Gymnasium Hall in Islamabad from Dec 21 to 25.Beach soccer

PFF is also set to introduce beach soccer in Pakistan. The idea came to its current Secretary General, Col Ahmed Yar Khan Lodhi, when he was inspecting the site for the FIFA Goal Project-II that will be built at Karachi’s Hawkesbay. But as far as the game’s origin goes, it was first played sometime in the 1980s on the Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Refined as a proper sport for professional players, beach soccer got its own set of rules in 1992 when the first beach soccer competition, a three-nation event featuring Brazil, Argentina and USA was staged at the Miami Beach in Florida. It is a pretty glamorous and commercial sport these days and foreseeing its popularity in the years to come FIFA, too, held the first-ever FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup in Brazil in 2005.

Other variations

There are also many other variations of football today that may not be as popular as the ones mentioned above but they do have the potential to grow into as big a sport as rugby, futsal or beach soccer.

Bossaball, played on inflatable surfaces or trampolines, is a mix of football, volleyball and gymnastics.

Played in a kind of cage Jorkyball is another form of football mixed with squash that is played with two players per side with the walls also having a big role in the action.

Then there is Ice Soccer, too. Played in the ice hockey arena, this is a team sport just like the real football game but much faster and far more challenging as it is played on ice with skates on.

Next is Underwater Football. The name is self explanatory … you just have to be a good swimmer to play football in the pool.

So we have taken football to the beach, on the ice and in the water. What else is left? Bikeball of course! Yes, you need to know how to perform amazing skills on the bicycle in order to play this strange version.