|
This is a great discussion AB because all the ingredients for you to critically assess how American football came to evolve are right before your eyes!
As stated earlier the missionaries wanted Maori to pray day and night and to stop playing their heathen games. However the early (pre-1830s) British genteel traders and entrepreneurs saw value in the open, free flowing passing and running-with-the-ball-in-hand style of football (called Ki-o-Rahi) which the Maori played. They took these concepts back to their public schools and transformed their mob game into a running game! Instead of attributing this style of football to the heathen Maori they did this by inventing the fiction of William Ellis picking the ball up and running with it and you will note AB that this fiction of William Web Ellis has at last been uncovered and those serious writers of rugby history (who aren't burdened with racial resistance)are attributing the concept of running rugby to the Maori game.That is simply why Maori and the Polynesians (South Pacific Islanders) are the best players in the world - it is traditional and comes 'naturally'.
So, and this should be easy now AB, American football evolved from which insignificant game?
|