Special Teams

[Nic Name]

American Football | International Rules

[dasviper]

I seem to remember the story of a British WWI or WWII military commander inspiring his troops to charge a stronghold by punting a soccer ball for them to chase... Someone who's a History major want to help me out here?

[Nic Name]

Allusion in the movie Legends of the Fall

The original script for the movie, as well as the storyboards for the war scenes, involved a soldier kicking a soccer ball into the air at the start of the scene. One of the final scenes of the attack was to be the soccer ball coming to rest beside a dead Canadian. The final film, as edited, makes the kicking of the soccer ball seem a little odd. At one point the director was heard on the set to comment on how he wanted to emulate actual war footage as much as possible. As soon as the men leave the trenches, one of them gets hit and falls back into the trench; this was based on famous footage shot during World War One. The soccer balls, one would imagine, are an homage to the actions of at least one British unit, who, on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in the summer of 1916, kicked soccer balls ahead of them across No Man's Land as a sign of contempt for the enemy.

Here's the ball.

Here's an interesting story of an unofficial "soccer truce" on Christmas Day in 1914.