EPTWell about 10 miles away from where I grew up, we had something called bottle kicking. In Rutland (often wrongly called Leicestershire) there are two villages with a rivalry hundreds of years old. It has to do with some stolen food and beer.
Every year on Easter Monday, a massive hare pie is cooked, and 3 kegs of beer are donated. After the pie is served, people from each village go a huge field, a keg of beer is thrown on the floor, and whichever 'team' gets it to their village wins.
There are no rules, kids and women take part and it often ends in some quite extreme violence. Settling of personal and inter village scores occurs.
This kind of thing is fairly common all over Europe and it got me thinking about sport and how it has always served as an outlet, not just for sportsmen and fitness freaks, but for basically everybody.
Anyway, this still happens to this day, I went along once for the fun (I was about 16, so it was a LONG time ago) and ended up with a bloodied nose, but full of beer and had an absolutely great day out.
There's something about a day of permitted violence that's a genuinely awesome release, and I'm a person who hates violence 364 days a year.
Here's an old video, the fun starts about 2 minutes in.
