Haxey Hood (Part 1): The Mother of All Football Matches: Swaying the Hood in Haxey

"Savour the pain, boys! Savour the pain!"

That's easy for him to say.

Blandie's lying near the top of the heap, and I'm down at the bottom, squashed by a dozen or more bodies, a thousand pounds of pressure concentrated within six feet.

Don't squeal like a pig.

I can't move, and I'm vaguely aware of the groans emanating from the bald heads and buzz cuts around me.

My torso feels like one of those giblet bags crammed up the backside of a butchered turkey.

The coroner will open me up and find nothing but a creamy pâté inside, human foie gras in a skin-and-bones bag.

At least I'm still conscious—not like that kid they pulled out of the crush a couple of collapses ago.

The Lord of the Hood—distinguished by his flowery top hat—jumped in to stop the ruckus, brandishing his wicker wand of office and bellowing: "MAN DOON! MAN DOON!"

The teenager was ripped out of the tangle of bodies and laid flat on the field, unconscious, his eyes fluttering and head and hands twitching. Either he was knocked out or fainted from the lack of oxygen.

"I hate it when that happens," an official frowned, without any irony.

But that kind of thing is bound to happen in the Haxey Hood, an organised riot that takes place every year on January 6th, supposedly since at least the 1200s.

Take as many as 300 men, get them liquored up, stick them on a claggy field in the freezing cold and throw a leather tube known as a Hood into the middle of the mob.

This being England, and The North in particular, the goal of the game is a no-brainer: to get back to the pub for more drinking.

The problem is, there are four locals within a one-mile radius—three in Haxey and one in the rival village of Westwoodside, on the other side of the field. And if they finish the game too soon, it would spoil the fun.

So, instead of heading straight for the nearest boozer, the competitors end up pushing in opposite directions, creating a slowly rotating human hurricane capable of trampling anyone or anything in its path—occasionally demolishing walls, tearing down hedges and bursting through people's front doors.

This asphyxiating crush of humanity, this juggernaut of flesh and bone, has an absurdly genteel name: the Sway.

Although it looks like the world's biggest scrum—in fact, it is an ancestor of rugby and football—there are crucial differences.

"It's not a scroom because you're standin' up," Blandie had explained in the pub. "If you were bent over, you'd snap your neck."

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©J.R. Daeschner

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