Gridball
1958
The Official Gridball Site
Gridball Explained
Gridball: the quick and short explanation
In brief, Gridball is a fun fictional sports game, which was launched in 1948 by four former Wartime Wrens and burst into the World's first major Professional Women's team sport. It's glamourous and global and has made superstars of the top players. Off the court, they date movie stars and racing drivers and it's a battle to keep them off the front pages while making sure they get the space they deserve on the back pages.
There are teams from all over the World and you can visit this website twice a week to see how the team from your area are getting on.
Now....If you want to know the full long winded version of exactly what it is and how the background mechanics work. It's all below.
What is Gridball?
Gridball is a fictional Women's bat and ball team sport where two teams of seven players face off on an indoor court with the aim of outscoring their opponents over the course of four quarters of fifteen minutes.
Six outcourt players are armed with a bat, similar in shape but about half the size of a Baseball bat. The ball is like a tennis ball but slightly larger. Players can catch the ball but must bounce it and hit it with the bat to move the ball on.
The Court is 60 metres long with divisions marked on the court every eight metres, and 20 metres wide, with divisions every five metres. This creates the Grid on the court that gives the game it's name. This creates a court that has thirty-two zones in the grid, eight that run the length of the court and four within each length. Each part of the Grid is 8 metres by 5 metres in size and is named. One end of the court has grid sections 1A, 1B, 1C and 1D, with a goal straddling 1B and 1C. At the other end of the court is sections 8A, 8B, 8C and 8D with the opposite goal at 8B and 8C. the ends, 1 and 8 are known as the shooting zones and are the only part of the court a team can take a shot at goal.
The two teams are made up of a net minder, often nicknamed the goalie. A Goalie is padded and must wear a helmet but they don't have a bat. Unlike Football as an example, a Goalie is the only player who can't catch the ball. They wear hand pads that they can use to bat the ball away. Goalies can also kick the ball or even head it with their helmet to clear an attack.
The Goalie is protected by a Left and Right Guard. These are the defenders, whose job it is to try and stop the attacking team. Defenders might go into attack if a team has an attacking free hit into the opponent's shooting zone.
The centre of the court is where the Sweeper and the Centre operate. Their role is to try and get control of the centre of the court to maintain the attacking pressure. If they can get the better of their opposite numbers they can get forward to support the attack. If under the cosh they drop back to try and protect the defenders.
Up front come the Attacker and the Shooter. Attackers are often noted for the good catching ability and accurate passing while shooters are skilled at batting first time and accuracy.
The team that scores the most goals over the course of an hour's play wins the game
The format of the Championship
Originally the game was a group staged Championship until it went beyond forty-eight teams, when a qualifying competition was introduced. In 1959 the competition was divided into Divisions. The Premier Championship consists of thirty-two teams who play a First Round in eight groups of four. The top two progress to Phase Two, four groups of four and the top two there go into the Quarter-Final groups. The top two meet in the final while the group runners up play for third place.
Meanwhile the bottom two teams in each First Round group go into the repechage phase against the top sixteen teams from the Secondary Championship. They play in groups and the top two in each group play in the Premier Championship next season while the bottom two play in the Secondary. Below that there is also a Tertiary Championship played regionally.
In the Divisions, teams play in round robin groups but instead of a simple Win-Tie-Loss points format, Gridball has six points options. Bonus win is worth three points to a team who wins by five or more clear goals. Any other victory is merely a two point Win. A scoring Tie is worth a point apiece but a Goalless tie earns nothing to either side. A Loss also earns nothing but a Penalty loss is issued when a team loses by more tha five clear goals and is a point deduction. A group table in Gridball reads B-W-T-G-L-P which stands for Bonus, Win, Tie, Goalless, Loss & Penalty.
In addition to the Championship, there's also an open knockout cup for teams of all Divisions and a Nations cup annually for national teams.
How the results are generated
The game itself is controlled using a set of random number generation parameters. This dictates virtually everything regarding the game. We won't bore the reader with the intricacy of the process, except to say that the process is hugely detailed and complex, right down to how many shots a team can have. There are are total of nine different sets of random number rules applied to each game.
Individual players
Every team has a squad of individual players who also are controlled by a set of random number generation rules. This dictates how they fare from game to game. Their performance controls their ability. Each player has a rating
0 = Squad Player. A player good enough to play at the highest level but usually for weaker teams
1 = Average. A run of the mill top level player
2 = Okay. A better than average player
3 = Good, 4 = Very Good, 5 = Excellent Good quality players who can add a lot to a team
6 = World Class, 7 = Star, 8 = Superstar, 9 = Megastar, 10 = Icon. The great players in the game who are often playing for the very best teams.
The back story
Gridball is fictional, but there is a back story to support the game. Enjoy.
Gridball was invented in 1942 in the city of Londonderry in Northern Ireland by members of the Women's Royal Navy stationed in the city. Initially the idea came from watching American GIs playing Baseball. At the request of the Wrens, the Americans provided a case of child sized bats and Tennis balls from which the game was then created. The Wrens initially played among themselves before challenging teams of women from the local shirt factories to matches. In 1944 a Championship was organised in the city and played against eight shirt factory teams and one from the local police. A second Championship was played in 1945 before the military presence in the city began to be removed.
One of the founding Wrens was the multi millionaire socialite, Ella Cross, and she set about creating Gridball as an organised sport in 1946. By 1948 she had created and funded thirty-six teams across the United Kingdom and Ireland. As a debutante, Cross wanted Gridbll to be as much about glamour as sport and players were schooled in deportment, etiquette, style and fashion as much as sporting training. The game attracted a combination of players of other sports as well as many former models and beauty queens with athletic ability. This leant Gridball a hugely glamourous image.
Twelve teams from around the United Kingdom played out the first season in 1951 with Cross already having another forty-eight teams from the UK, Ireland, USA, Mexico and Continental Europe lined up to join in groups of twelve over the nest four years. Every year since, twelve more franchises are offered. However, a small number of those original forty-eight teams have since merged of ceased as a senior team.
Broadcast
Tournaments are broadcast every five months on Youtube purely for entertainment but we'd love to hear from you if you have started supporting team.
Characters
The characters within the game are presented in a few ways. The most visually impressive imagery of characters and kits are the 3D characters created exclusively for Gridball by 3D artist Linwelly. Working initially with only a description of a brief of a sport that had never existed the characters have brought Gridball to life in excellent quality, despite often having to work from a brief that has thrown up several challenging requests.
With so many characters in the game, it's not possible to create 3D characters for them all so the depiction of many uses imagery from the time to tell the story of Gridball. Alas most of the glamourous women who are depicted as Gridball characters have been long forgotten over the course of time by wider society. And most have sadly passed away. However, while their images are being primarily used to present a visual representation of a character, they're also viewed as an homage to the celebrity they once enjoyed. At this point, if you recognise anyone on any of our images or videos being portrayed as a Gridballer, please do get in touch. Over the course of time, pages will appear on this site for individual players where full credit of the individual whose image they were modelled on will be acknowledged.
Involvement
Finally. if you enjoy keeping up to date with Gridball and have any ideas about it, or indeed would just like to get involved in any way, please do get in touch as we would love to hear from you.
Things we really would love.
* Vloggers/bloggers who might concentrate on one specific team
* Artists in any field who would like to bring Gridball to life through any medium
* Pubs who might want to become the official supporters club of a team. please contact us, we have some ideas for this. They don't either investing or making any money as Gridball is just for fun.
* Anything else you can think of.