The Founding Fathers and Mothers of 3-Sided Football in Australia (we believe).
A diverse bunch of ageing professionals (and unprofessionals) led by local architect Barnaby Chiverton, came together in May 2014 in St Kilda, a bayside suburb of Melbourne, for the inaugural 3-sided football match in Australia. With plans to move onwards and upwards (injuries aside) over the ensuing months, this motley crew believes they have founded what will be a thriving competition.
Three randomly selected teams, no training, no offside and good-natured competitiveness constitute the philosophy of the competition.
The hexagonal 3-sided football pitch
The concept of 3 sided football involves 3 sides of around 5 players, each attempting to score through their opponents’ goals, and limiting goals conceded across three thirty minute ‘thirds’, for it is least goals conceded that determines the winner. This results in a game of tactics and conspiracy as teams sometimes combine to score against the common enemy, that is, whoever is leading at the time.
Also, 3-sided football is a game of geometery, mathematics and philosphy. According to Wikipedia:
“it was devised by the Danish Situationist Asger Jorn to explain his notion of triolectics, his refinement on the Marxian concept of dialetics, as well as to disrupt one’s everyday idea of football. Played on a hexagonal pitch, the game can be adapted for similarity to soccer as well as other versions of football.
“The game purports to deconstruct the confrontational and bi-polar nature of conventional football as an analogy of class struggle in which the referee stands as a signifier of the state and media apparatus, posturing as a neutral arbitrator in the political process of ongoing class struggle”
Or not.
Asger Jorn lights his pipe.
