What is “agricultural football”?

[Patrick Thistle]

Tractor football might be my new favourite variant of football

[Patrick Thistle]

I found my copy of the Half Decent Football Book and thought 'oh I wonder what it says about Agricultural Football' and it's not in there.

That made me think the book is probably due for a second edition sometime soon. There's probably loads more things that need to go in there.

[treibeis]

The self same rural places that gave us Laurie Lee and John Constable?

You forgot The Wurzels.

(Although half of them pretend to be one of us Somersetonians when, in fact, they aren't. Tommy Banner's Scottish and Pete Budd's a city slicker. "Hicksters", they are.)

[DPDPDPDP]

This was how the game was taught to me in the US in the 80s and, I suspect, a lot of youth soccer and high school soccer is still like this. Thus, you can see why the US has a long way to go.

My son is on a football (soccer) scholarship at a university near Houston. His team are encouraged to play possession football but there are a few headless chickens in his squad. I've watched quite a few uni games (it's amazing how many are streamed live) and the better uni teams do play some good football.

[DPDPDPDP]

A former team mate of mine from years ago and was a Bristol City fan and used to sing this song (I think these were the words)

"We can't read and we can't write but that don't really matter,
cos we come from Ashton Gate and we can drive a tractor"

[Simon G]

We sing that song at Cheltenham - we're from Cheltenhamshire though (of course).

I'm not saying we didn;'t steal it from Bristol City, but I genuinely don't know as it's been the main song since before I started going in 1994.

[treibeis]

A former team mate of mine from years ago and was a Bristol City fan and used to sing this song (I think these were the words)

"We can't read and we can't write but that don't really matter,
cos we come from Ashton Gate and we can drive a tractor"

I thought the Ipswich lads made that up.

[Jon]

Ale-house football. Any difference to agricultural football?

[tee rex]

I thought the Ipswich lads made that up.

Sung/heard at Exeter in the 70's. Along with "Drink up thy/zee Cider" and others that I thought were ours, but later found they were nicked from Bristol.

[Third rate Leszno]

Ale-house football. Any difference to agricultural football?

Probably not - I think the phrase was popularised when Bill Shankly used it after Alun Evans got tackled round the neck at Southampton.

[Glass Half Empty]

Ale-house football. Any difference to agricultural football?

I remember a TV piece on Liverpool with (I think) Tommy Smith saying that under Shankly he encouraged an "Ale-house Ball" when they needed to breakdown a stubborn defence.. it was the first time I'd heard the expression being a kid at the time and for quite a while I had no idea what he was referring to.

[Gangster Octopus]

I've had a Swindon fan quote the tractor song to me; it must be a generic west country thing.

[Snake Plissken]

Ale-House sounds like a suitable for broadcast in the 1970s version of shithouse.