It is unlikely that Luther Blissett is even aware of the fact that he's the inspiration behind three-sided football, a form of the game that 'deconstructs the mythic bipolar structure of conventional football'. But then Watford is not a hotbed of class war and, although it is rumoured that he organised a three-sided football league during his playing days, Blissett probably isn't attending Hackney Anarchist Week in east London. Goal is, however, and it is here that we encounter the Luther Blissett 3-Sided Football League, named after the man himself. The game has been further developed by anarchist group the London Psychogeographical Association (LPA).
Played on an hexagonal pitch between three sides, each defending one goal, the aim is not to score the most goals, but concede the least. Goals are conceded when the ball 'is thrust through a team's orifice', so dissolving 'the homoerotic/homophobic bipolarity of the two-sided game'. Put simply, three-sided football is, ideally, an exercise in co-operative behaviour, with one side persuading another to join in a campaign against the third - thus breaking down the very basis of capitalist organisation - and all before teatime.
http://anarchistsoccer.pbwiki.com/3%20Sided%20Anarchist%20Football
Allright we will not overthrow Babylon but we can meet to celebtae ourselfs you do not have to play some might deisre to go for a walk and Hug Some Trees thanking our Earth our Mother for the live she gave us forgeting all the bullshit of christmass we aim to start this now and contine each year
We will meet from 12 noon Bring yourself a friend some food to share and a warm drink to share Then piss up at http://www.myspace.com/savetherutland see you there.
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one side persuading another to join in a campaign against the third ?
22.12.2006 03:22
"If anyone has ever suggested that chess may be played as a game with more than two sets of pieces, it has never caught on. Neither has a version of football evolved in which more than two teams occupy the pitch. We do not play three way tennis. This must be more than a matter of the limits to physical and mental coordination- for all we know what tends to happen in competitions between three players. Sooner or later two o them will gang up to elimate the third. There is something inherently unstable about competitions with more than two main players, which is one of the complaints often directed at multi-party politics. Even in the UK, where the Labour and Conservative parties have for decades far outweighed the Liberals, talk of coalition has frequently been in the air.
This takes on an all too deadlier significance when the game is not chess, but war. Cromwell's army represented a complex mixture of different interests, but it disintegrateted into fighting factions only after the common enemy, the Royalists, no longer threatemed it. Twice in the twentieth century, Europes many disparate nation states formed alliances which set about destroying each other, the nations of NATO and the Warsaw Pact would have done the job much more comprehensivly in the decades that followed the Second World War. "
Okay, say we prove him wrong not only in football, can't we also prove that we are better than that. Three teams of strikers against the three teams of goalies
Now instead of three teams, imagne every football team in the world playing every other at the same time, now imagine the depth of that pitch. That is what anarchy is, every team combined for and against each other, not just three in open competition.
philip