(Nicholas Law : G-ball -- August 1991, revised October 1992.
HTML translation by Andrew Boulton, January 1998)
From The Spinward Marches G-Ball League Official Preview of the 1125-26 Season (Rhylanor/Rhylanor 1125)
What binds the worlds of the Imperium together? The xboat system? The feudal vows of the nobility? For many citizens sporting ties are an equally important source of imperial unity, creating shared interests for systems which would otherwise have little in common.
There are a multitude of sports played in the Imperium, many being
unique to a particular region or race. One sport that is found
in every sector is zero-gravity handball, popularly called G-ball,
gravball or nul-ball. It is a human invention which is now enjoyed
by many other races.
G-ball developed out of the ball games played by off-duty Terran naval personnel during the Interstellar Wars. The court could be any open volume inside a starship hull where there was zero-gravity. Empty fuel tanks were especially suitable, once they had had their baffles dismantled. These informal games still take place today, when a visiting cruiser squadron might find itself challenged by the local marine garrison commander, who wants to provide a morale-boosting diversion for his troops. The Scouts too like to 'shoot some ball', the bays of xboat tenders often being the chosen location.
The collapse of the Rule of Man also brought the collapse of interstellar sport. During the Long Night, a variety of zero-G ball games evolved inside the scattered petty states, most of them surviving in some form to the present day. Modern G-ball is really an amalgam of two of these sports. Both of them, although very similar, developed independently; one in the Sylean Federation, the other in the Aakhri Empire (subsector N of Dagudashaag sector). The two games came into contact in the early years of the Third Imperium and borrowed elements from each other until they had merged into a single sport. This new game was soon being played throughout the coreward portions of the Imperium.
The fundamentals of the sport, such as each side fielding five players at a time from a team of nine, were settled by 200 and indeed since 400 the rules have hardly changed. Both proto-games used a court of 60m by 30m - these dimensions seem to have their roots in the standardised shipbuilding techniques of the Terrans. However, there remains to this day variations in the size of the ball used; from league to league it can range in circumference from 60cm to 80cm.
G-ball spread across the Imperium, growing more popular over the
centuries and ousting many home-grown sports. There are now thousands
of amateur and professional teams playing in single-planet leagues
in hundreds of systems. But to the Imperial citizen G-ball means
the interstellar leagues, with their fabulously wealthy star players,
majestic orbital stadia and constant holoview coverage.
The 'majors' are organised at the sector level. For example, the Spinward Marches G-Ball League has forty-four teams, grouped into five conferences: Regina, Rhylanor, Lunion, Mora and Glisten. The Regina and Mora Conferences, which have the largest number of teams, are both split into a Core and a Rim Division. Rhylanor is the oldest conference in the League, its six charter teams being founded in 512.
The Glisten Conference was suspended following the destruction of the stadium above Aki in 1117 during the Aslan invasion. The unrest in Trin's Veil and Glisten subsectors, caused by the ihatei encroachment, made team owners unwilling to risk their teams by either playing or travelling there, despite guarantees given by the Aslan that they would be perfectly safe. The Aslan have long been supporters of G-ball and some of their best athletes have played alongside human team-mates in the Imperium's top sides.
Elsewhere, the Rebellion has caused most sector leagues to be suspended for the duration, although in some isolated subsectors away from the war zones teams play on as if the Imperium was at peace.
Armed conflict has a history of disrupting league schedules. The outbreak of the Fifth Frontier War caused all play in the Spinward Marches to be halted at a time when Regina Royals seemed a certainty to take the championship. Although the Royals were to win the Victory Tournament of 1110, it was not the same. The fans felt robbed and spent the next decade complaining. The Royals did eventually make their fans happy at the climax of the 1120 playoffs, when they defeated the reigning champion Mora Maulers by four games to two, in the best-of-seven SpinBowl series at Equus.
In common with the majority of leagues, the Spinward Marches follows the 'homeworld' pattern, in which each team is based at a particular world from which it draws its support. Divisions and conferences are formed from neighbouring teams. Other sectors follow the 'circus' pattern, also called the 'barbarian' pattern, where teams have fans, and marketing offices, scattered over many worlds. These itinerant teams then tour the sector playing in a succession of tournaments.
From opening game to playoff final, the season typically lasts eighty weeks, with a twenty-four week gap between seasons. The average team plays seventy-five regular season games, mostly in week-long three game series against rivals from the same conference. Each season a team will also go on several tours through neighbouring conferences. With the completion of the regular season, conference champions and wild-card qualifiers go on to contest the playoffs and find a sector champion.
Before the Rebellion, every regular season would be interrupted by Emperor's Cup tournaments. These tournaments, of which several would be held at various systems around a sector, were all of a standard format: a round-robin first stage followed by a knock-out second stage, the final game being held on the Emperor's birthday (which for Strephon was day 202). For the four-week long tournaments teams would travel great distances, sometimes even into other sectors, to play teams that they would not usually get to meet. The assassination of Strephon put league officials in an awkward political situation, which those in the Spinward Marches resolved by declaring that in future the tournaments were to be called Domain or Archducal Cups, and were to finish on day 091, the date of Norris' elevation to Archduke. In odd-numbered years the Domain Cups now serve to mark the start of the season.
Other traditional interruptions to the regular season in the Spinward
Marches are the charity All-Star games, held every other year
on day 001, between teams picked from the finest players in each
conference.
The day before the All-Star games is when the mid-season draft takes place. An identical draft is also held during the off-season. Within each conference, teams take it in turn to draft new players from a pool of available talent. In this pool are free agents, who may have travelled from distant subsectors, newly graduated university players and the rising stars from the professional planetary leagues. Large universities, like Rhylanor, each have several rival G-ball societies. These often provide scholarships for promising young athletes. Old pros with many seasons experience will always tell you that no games are as fiercely competitive as those in the varsity leagues. Few university players are drafted straight into the majors, the bulk of them first spending a season or so in the minor planetary leagues, honing their skills.
The chances of any would-be major leaguer being picked in a draft are slim, as teams are allowed only twenty-five players on their roster from which to pick each game's nine participants, and the roster size is even smaller in some sectors. But for the lucky few who do make it the rewards can be enormous. Even the most junior player will receive a basic appearance fee of Cr100,000 per game, although it should be remembered that careers in the majors are short. Not many players can absorb the physical punishment of the long best-of-seven set games for more than three or four seasons, while some players even find that all their money makes them no longer 'hungry' enough to be at their sharpest in the court.
In 1115, Rhylanor Raiders, in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to spend their way back to their past glories, signed Jurgen 'Duke' Shaw on a contract worth a record Cr900,000 basic a game. This was before the scoring and win bonuses which push many star G-ball players' pay over the million credits a game mark. Shaw's signing did bring the Raiders short term benefit: the live holoviewing ratings for his first home series against Skull Crushers averaged over 700 million curious sentients.
When holoviewing, a G-ball fan can either watch the traditional
three dimensional representation of the court or he can take advantage
of the holorecorders mounted in the helmets of all the players
to experience the sites and sounds of the game as if he or she
were actually playing.
To provide a suitable big-game atmosphere, both for the players and the holoviewing fans, all G-ball clubs have seats around the court for spectators. The court's walls are tinted to give the players a hazy view of the crowd but be fully transparent from the spectators' side. Even though they know the wall is really there, it can still be a little disconcerting for the fans when a 200kg Aslan comes hurtling through the air towards them.
Tickets to see a major league game are expensive, the cheapest around Cr100, but the drink and snack facilities are traditionally all free. A surprisingly widespread apocryphal tale told at stadia is of the fan that ate so much that he became stuck in his seat and stayed there for an entire season! Since the main purpose of the live audience is to generate excitement, few stadia have many private or corporate suites, although this exclusiveness serves to raise the rents of the existing suites to astronomic levels.
Most stadia are in orbit, although a few in high tech level systems
are on the planet's surface. Some of the finest arenas are in
hollowed out asteroids, the one at Gitosy (Spinward Marches 2918)
being famed for its elegant architecture. To solve the problem
of where to practice while en route to away games, many teams
simply equip their stadia with jump drives and take the whole
lot with them.
Professional G-ball games are overseen by five officials. Inside the court are the Umpire, responsible for keeping discipline amongst the players, and two Goal-Judges, who each watch over one end of the court and who rule on scoring and related infringements. Outside the court is the head official, called the Referee, and his assistant who monitor the game using the many holocameras.
Transmitters mounted in the armour of each player enable his or her position to be tracked at all times and lets some illegalities such as wall-walking and offside (loitering on a goal) to be handled by computer. The computer will warn a player moving along the side wall over his helmet communicator if he is in danger of crossing a girth line, one of the thin lines that section off the sidewall into 6m wide hoops; to then ignore the warning and deliberately cross a girth line is a sending-out offence. Similarly, the computer also prompts any player who has stayed for a second on a goal. Failure to then jump makes that player offside, and thus ineligible to touch either the ball or another player until back onside, i.e. having landed again on the sidewall. The tracking computer's data is made available to coaches during the game to help them evaluate the performance of their own players and those of the opposing team.
The armoured suits worn by G-ball players can make them resemble soldiers in battle dress. G-ball armour is not as resilient as the military variety but does help to protect players from injuring themselves when colliding with each other. More dangerous is when a player catastrophically loses control, usually because of a tackle, and crashes into the wall of the court. One way in which G-ball players differ from combat troops is that they want to be seen, and so their armour can be brightly coloured and adorned with the club emblem.
The helmet communicator enables the players and officials to talk, or more often shout, at one another. The coaches too can speak to their players, but only between points.
There are adhesive patches on the back of G-ball gloves to help players cling to the wall, as otherwise any small movement could push them off towards the centre of the court. Adhesive patches on the palms, to help catch the ball, are not permitted. The rules also forbid the armour being equipped with servo-assistance or any means of propulsion. Neither can more low tech fittings such as spikes and studs be attached, and nor can the players themselves be enhanced, either bionically, chemically or psionically.
As well as a transmitter, the ball contains pressure sensors to aid in enforcing the holding rule. This rule states that the player can only keep one limb in contact with the ball except at the instant of catching or passing it, and cannot hold it against the body. The intention of this rule is to stop tackles becoming wrestling matches and so reduce injury and speed up the game.
Anyone who has watched a game will have noticed the tackle shell, a luminous, transparent globe three metres in radius which is holographically projected around the ball. Besides helping spectators to follow the ball, the shell's main purpose is to let players know when they are close enough to the ball to be allowed to grapple with their opponents.
The rules state that the home team selects the atmospheric density
inside the court. This is normally the same as the homeworld,
although this is of course not possible with vacuum worlds or
those with very thick atmospheres. But the visiting team must
be prepared for the air pressure to have been changed for tactical
reasons, as it can effect the game. In a thinner atmosphere the
players and the ball will fly faster, while in a denser one players
can swerve the ball when passing, so foiling would-be interceptors.
Whatever the atmosphere of the homeworld, harmful taints must
be removed from the air inside the court.
The Aslan fondness of G-ball has already been mentioned. The Vargr too have provided many of G-ball's greatest stars. Both of these races have spread the game beyond the Imperium's borders, although they have altered both its rules and tactics to better suit them. Although the Hivers are not thought to play the game much themselves, they have introduced it to 'younger' races in their Federation as a tool for channeling aggressive energies away from war, that other popular spectator sport.
To rimward, dolphins are often found playing G-ball, one successful minor league Terran team being entirely composed of them. They cannot use their waldoes (as this is ruled as enhancement), but their aquatic background puts them at an advantage when manoeuvring in three dimensions.
There are accounts of the Zhodani having a sport similar to G-ball that they play at their Games. However, their use of psionics would make it nearly unrecognisable, if not totally unwatchable, to Imperial citizens.
As you would expect, having invented it, the Solomani continue to be great fans of the game. Indeed, play in the Sol subsector restarted in 1118 almost as soon as their battlefleets had left for systems further coreward. Before the Solomani re-occupation of Terra, its G-ball team - the Firma - had been a centre for anti-Imperial agitation and its games against the local rival LunaTics, a team identified with the pro-Imperial movement, were played in a somewhat charged atmosphere. At last report, the tension remains under the new regime, but now it is Terra Firma that has the fans in high places, while the 'Tics find themselves being investigated by SolSec.
Similarly, before the Fifth Frontier War, Grand Sports Club of
Entrope used to play in the Sword Worlds League of Gravball. (The
game in the Sword Worlds is almost identical to Imperial G-ball
except for allowing some blocking away from the ball.) Its fixtures
at Entrope Stadium often turned into rowdy demonstrations pressing
for the system to be reunited with the Darrian Confederation,
and consequently the club was regularly threatened with closure
by the authorities. After the war Entrope did again become a Darrian
world, but G.S.C.'s supporters missed their gravball and the club
has now requested to play again in the Sword Worlds League. Sporting
loyalties can sometimes be stronger than political ones!
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