Scottish town feels pull of centuries-old blood sport

KIRKWALL, Scotland — William Thomson's family had played this sport for centuries, so he understood that he needed to choose between two strategies for the annual Christmas Day ba' game.

The scrawny 17-year-old could fight for the ball in the center of the riotous scrum, where more than 300 men would function as a human juicer, turning his face red, then purple. He would be scratched, punched, kneed and bitten. His ribs might break. He could pass out unconscious.

Or, Thomson could follow convention for players his size and stay near the edge of the scrum, pushing the pile. This would work well unless the ball popped out and the mob changed direction. Cars, gravestones, houses, strollers, hotel lobbies — all had been kicked, shoved or trampled in pursuit of the ball during previous games. Anticipating such a stampede, business and homeowners in town had nailed wooden planks across their doors and windows.

"If you're on the edge of the scrum and it turns on you," one veteran player said, "then you might as well be dead."

This, Thomson decided, was his safest option.

He never considered not participating. The men in the Thomson family — like the men in most families here — have played this game since at least the mid-1600s. It is one of the oldest and most physical sports, and it's almost certainly the most simple.

Half of the men in Kirkwall, called Doonies, try to push a small ball into the sea using any means necessary. The other half, called Uppies, work to push the ball to a wall one mile across town. The ba', which refers to both the game and the ball with which it is played, can last anywhere from four minutes to nine hours in freezing temperatures and hurricane-force winds.

The ba' is played nowhere else. It has persisted in Kirkwall because its basic tenets are congruent with life on these Orkney Islands in northern Scotland. If you're tough enough to survive in this old Viking territory, in a frostbitten town of around 6,000 bordered by white-capped seas, then you don't worry about relaxing on Christmas and New Year's Day. You put on steel-toe boots and a rugby shirt and walk downtown to the almost 900-year-old St. Magnus Cathedral, ready for hell.

The Uppies and Doonies squeezed into a tight pack on Christmas afternoon in front of the cathedral. For almost 30 minutes, the scrum deadlocked in the 15-foot-wide alley. Two hundred Uppies grunted and pushed in one direction; 115 Doonies held their ground.

Thick steam rose from the pack, and Thomson couldn't find fresh air. He called out for space, but the screaming mob drowned his request. His eyes rolled backward and his head fell on his shoulder. A nearby fellow Doonie slapped him across the cheek and poured water on his face, desperate to wake him. Thirty seconds passed before two spectators climbed down from the alley wall and stepped on the heads and shoulders of ba' players to reach Thomson. They pulled his limp body from the pile and carried him 100 yards away.

Once he awoke, Thomson asked his girlfriend what had happened. His ribs ached, but he felt otherwise OK. A few friends stopped by to check on him, and one offered a flask of whiskey.

"Thanks," Thomson said. "I need this to get my nerves back."

He took a swig and handed back the flask. Then he lifted himself up over a wall and dropped back into the riot.

Putting off retirement

Three days before the Christmas ba', Ian Smith diagrammed game strategies while sitting next to a coal fire in his house overlooking the town. At 60, Smith is one of the oldest men still participating in the ba'. He has played for 45 years, never missing the twice-annual game despite heart surgery, a hip replacement, nine broken ribs and two knee surgeries. A butcher and a lifelong Orcadian — he refuses to call himself Scottish — Smith identifies first and foremost as a Doonie.

When the ba' game was first played in Kirkwall, teams were divided by whether a player was born closer to the ocean (a Doonie) or the wall (an Uppie).

A hospital opened in Kirkwall about 50 years ago and became the location for all births, so now family history determines the teams. Newcomers to the island usually move into recent housing developments near the wall and declare themselves Uppies, which has created an imbalance. With almost twice as many men, the Uppies have won 15 of the last 16 ba's.

Smith promised friends he would hold off on retirement until after the next Doonie win, a vow that further stretches the conventions of good sense with each passing year. Arthritis has begun to seize his already weathered hands, making it impossible for him to clench them into fists.

For this year's Christmas ba' (after a week of recuperation, the game also is played on New Year's Day), Smith had solicited help from his two sons in hopes of finally pushing the ba' into the ocean. Kevin, 27, had traveled from Edinburgh to play in the game, his first trip home in a year. Sean, 25, had agreed to participate in the ba' for the first time since he lost consciousness in the middle of a 2003 scrum.

Librarians have traced the Kirkwall ba' back to the 1650s, but several local legends place its origins even earlier. Many Uppies believe the ba' is the descendant of a game played by Vikings here in the ninth century. Smith and most Orcadians swear the ba' began in the 1400s, when a Kirkwall leader beheaded a neighboring tyrant and residents kicked and shoved his skull across town.

Ba' players have preserved the game by steadfastly refusing to modernize it. There is no set of written rules, no official organization, no record-keeping of any kind. Even the 4-pound, black-and-brown-striped ba's still are made specifically for each game by a rotation of local craftsmen. To survive the scrum, a ba' must withstand the equivalent pressure of a two-ton weight. The craftsmen stuff Portuguese cork into London leather and spend three days stitching the ba' together with 50 yards of eight-cord flax.

Neither Uppies nor Doonies wear uniforms or distinguishing marks of any kind. If anyone should get confused about who's who in the midst of the 300-person tangle of arms, legs and faces, he's wise to keep it to himself.

A 10-person crew of voluntary paramedics and an unwritten code of sportsmanship have limited ba'-related fatalities to one, in 1903. There always has been a boys' ba' for children 15 and younger at 10:30 a.m. on Christmas and New Year's Day, followed by a men's ba' at 1 p.m.

Church bell starts the game

The sun — or something vaguely like it — filtered through a thick sea fog and rose over Kirkwall at 9 on Christmas morning, illuminating the epicenter of this 70-island archipelago that sits closer to the Arctic Circle than to London. It would set again in less than seven hours, leaving the town's residents in the eerie darkness that accompanies their extreme geographic isolation.

The day's ba' forecast called for temperatures in the high 30s and "a bit of a breeze," a term Orcadians use for all gusts under 100 mph.

An hour before the beginning of the ba', the streets remained still and silent, as they had since the end of October. Most residents here are fishermen and livestock farmers whose work goes dark during the winter.

As the giant clock on St. Magnus Cathedral neared 1 p.m., hundreds of spectators gathered along the cobblestone main street. Two hundred Uppies strutted down the street from the north; 115 Doonies approached from the south. They met in front of the church and glared at each other. Then the church bell chimed to signal 1 p.m., and the ba' descended into the pack.

The ba' traveled less than 100 yards in the game's first hour, with Uppies and Doonies pushing in opposite directions to create a near standstill. The only significant movement came once every five minutes or so, when spectators climbed over the pile and pulled unconscious players — first William Thomson, then a half-dozen others — out to safety. Participants stopped moving altogether for 30 seconds early in the game to allow paramedics to strap one man onto a stretcher.

Players always have expected to return home with bite marks, gashes, bruised hands and black eyes, but the rate of serious injuries has doubled in recent games. Kirkwall's population has grown by more than 1,000 in the past decade, and the size of the ba' scrum — and the pressure at its center — has correspondingly metastasized.

Instead of trying to push the expanded scrum toward a goal with sheer force, Uppie and Doonie leaders now rely on strategy and trickery to move the ba'. As the deadlock continued on Christmas, Smith climbed a wall for an aerial view of the action. He spotted the ba' in the center of the scrum, held by two Doonies.

With a succession of winks and hand movements, Smith instructed the Doonies to surreptitiously hand the ba' backward, from one teammate to the next, in the opposite direction of their goal. When the ba' finally reached the last Doonie, the player sprinted off. He made it four blocks toward the water before a dozen Uppies caught him.

Spectators — and most players — seldom know who holds the ba', and that mystery increases the frenzy. The ba' spends considerable time hidden under players' shirts, and participants rarely throw or kick it. Rather, the team in possession typically hands the ba' around discreetly, like a stolen jewel.

"Ba's up there, boys"

As the sun faded on Christmas, three Uppies left the scrum and climbed onto the slanted roof of an Indian restaurant. Two of them grabbed the third Uppie's ankles and dangled him from the roof, so that he was suspended upside down over the scrum. A teammate on the ground handed up the ba', and the Uppie pulled himself back onto the roof.

"Ba's up there, boys," Smith yelled, pointing frantically at the roof. "Come on! Get him."

A pack of Doonies hurriedly climbed above the Indian restaurant, where one player's foot broke through the shingled roof. He pulled himself back onto solid ground, caught up to the ba' holder and tackled him. Two Doonies kicked the ba' loose and threw it back into the scrum, but an Uppie caught the ba' and eventually sprinted away amid the chaos. He made it within a few blocks of the Uppie goal before the rest of the pack caught up.

Fifteen minutes later, at about 5 p.m., 200 Uppies shoved the remainder of the way to their goal and pressed the ba' against the wall for victory. As dictated by tradition, a handful of experienced Uppies stood at the wall and continued to fight over the ba', a process that determines the game's individual winner.

Ian Gorn, 36, eventually emerged with the ba', and teammates hoisted him onto their shoulders. They carried him in the direction of a local pub, where Gorn gulped down a beer. Then he walked to his downtown apartment, where, as the ba's individual winner, it was his responsibility to host an immediate, all-night party for all 300 sweat-soaked ba' participants.

Gorn hugged his wife as he walked in his front door and grabbed another beer from the hundreds stacked on his dining-room table, donated to the winner by a local grocery store. He set the ba' down for display on a counter in his living room. His two sons, ages 7 and 12, reached up to grab it. Then they fell onto the floor in a tussle for possession.