{"id":44,"date":"2006-05-30T11:51:02","date_gmt":"2006-05-30T11:51:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spiritoffootball.com\/2006\/blog\/2006\/05\/30\/the-ball-is-underway"},"modified":"2012-12-14T19:27:41","modified_gmt":"2012-12-14T19:27:41","slug":"the-ball-is-underway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2006\/blog\/2006\/05\/30\/the-ball-is-underway\/","title":{"rendered":"Video: The Ball gets underway"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"width: 320px;height: 240px\" src=\"https:\/\/theball.tv\/common\/images\/2006\/batt_park\/uk_batt_teamshot.jpg\" alt=\"The Teams 2006 (photo by Andrea Daschner)\" \/><br \/>\nThe Teams celebrate (photo by Andrea Daschner)<\/p>\n<p>Many thanks to everyone who turned up at Battersea Park on Sunday &#8212; we love you all! What luck we had with the weather, eh?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Final score:<br \/>\nLights 8 &#8212; 8 Darks<br \/>\n(Lights won on penalties)<\/strong><\/p>\n<div class=\"sofvm_embed alignnone\"><div class=\"sofvm_video\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The kickoff game in Battersea Park\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/lASyMTPvVJs?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n\n<p>Recreating the first official game to FA rules.<\/p>\n<div class=\"sofvm_video_post_link\"><p><a href=\"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2006\/videos\/the-kickoff-game-in-battersea-park\/#respond\">Comment on this video<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n<p>Full match report to come, but in the meantime, here is reminder of <a href=\"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/blog\/2002\/03\/19\/the-opening-game\">what Phil had to say in 2002<\/a> about the reason we do this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Football Association itself grew from a small group of players who, tired of the broken arms, endless arguments (not to mention endless pitches) drew up some rules to level the stakes. The evening of that first game, they made this toast &#8212; &#8220;<em>Success to Football, irrespective of class and creed&#8221;<\/em>. We will be adding <span style=\"text-decoration: line-through\">&#8220;<\/span><span style=\"text-decoration: line-through\"><span style=\"text-decoration: line-through\">sex&#8221;<\/span><span style=\"text-decoration: line-through\">\u009d<\/span><\/span> (don&#8217;t you mean <em>&#8220;gender&#8221;<\/em>? &#8211; ed.) and &#8220;talent&#8221;\u009d to the list, and generally getting right into this footballing occasion.<\/p>\n<p>So the game in Battersea Park will honour the FA and mark the start of our journey to the World Cup, the very pinnacle of footballing excellence. Just grab your footballs and join in at the other end of the scale.<\/p>\n<p>After all is done, football will remain.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/spiritoffootball.com\/2006\/images\/batt_park\/uk_batt_teamshot.jpg\" alt=\"The Teams 2006\" style=\"width:320px;height:240px\" \/><br \/>\nThe Teams celebrate<\/p>\n<p>Many thanks to everyone who turned up at Battersea Park on Sunday &#8212; we love you all! What luck we had with the weather, eh?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Final score: Lights: 8 &#8212; Darks 8 (Lights won on penalties)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Full match report to come&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-england","category-video"],"geo":{"latitude":51.47802730000000082100086729042232036590576171875,"longitude":-0.160943300000000011351630746503360569477081298828125,"description":null},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2006\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2006\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2006\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2006\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2006\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2006\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":366,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2006\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions\/366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2006\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2006\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2006\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}