Newbie Blog: On The Korfball Terraces

My Dad first took me to watch korfball when I was five. We cheered from the terraces and, at the end of the game, I turned to him and said: “Dad, I want to be a korfballer.”

Okay, that never happened. I never saw a korfball match as a child. In fact, I went through my first three decades without watching a korfball match or even looking at one of those stupidly tall posts. So why bother mentioning this? Because if you haven’t seen a sport played then it makes it a lot more difficult to play it yourself.

Take football. Even if you’ve got no interest in football, you’ve probably still got a basic idea of how a football match works. Run around, kick the ball in the goal, and join your teammates for a loving embrace. It’s the same idea with cricket, rugby and basketball, where even a novice should have a basic idea of how they work.

But it isn’t like that with korfball. There’s no TV coverage – unless it’s one of those “here’s a quirky sport from mainland Europe” news reports – and that makes it a tough sport to pick up. How do you know how to play a sport unless you’ve seen it played?

That’s why I went along to my first korfball match on Sunday, to watch Abingdon 1 and Oxford City 1 play out a hard-fought 11-7. I was a bad crowd member – rarely clapping or cheering – but I watched intently and a few things started to sink in.

The idea of changing ends after two goals makes far more sense when you can see one team attacking each basket per half. I’ve got a bit more of an idea of some of the theory, like why we throw the ball one handed; why we need to move quickly to find space; and why we need to keep concentrating. I don’t claim that watching one match makes me an expert, but I think it at least makes me less of a novice.

The challenge now is watching more and learning more, and putting some of it into practise. I expect to start doing that in proper matches in the next couple of weeks.

And my Dad might even be there to watch.

Rich Heap