Binball Mug

Binball is a sport, invented by schoolfriends Tom Whyman and Ivan Brett when bored with football at school this one time. Essentially, the sport involves three balls, each similar in weight and size to a basketball, and two bins. There are two teams of fifteen, each with the aim of getting all three balls, at any one time, into their opponent's bin. This constitutes a 'hurley'. At the end of each game (a game lasts nine 'acres', or rounds), the team with the most hurleys win. Under the Graaf-Becker Ruling (1998), however, hurleymaking is reversed, meaning, in effect, that there are now several ways of poncing a hurley, which are then divided up into different 'locks', or categories. These include: - The three bin hurley, ie: the traditional hurley, which ponces a full lock. - The majority hurley, ie: ducking two out of the three balls in the bin, with the pattern: Us-Them-Us, constituting a partial blue lock. - The reverse hurley, ducking on the pattern them-us-us, reversing their ponce and putting the advantage on you, which obviously ponces a quarter lock, which is either purple or orange, depending on the referee. - The deadened hurley, tradding the length us-us-them, garnering a pinch at a green tri-lock, following a free shot from navel, providing a clear line at the bin, should you ponce it. Under the Graaf-Becker Ruling (1998), therefore, the fullest locksmith wins, but only if his colours, when mixed, make a sort of yellowish brown, or else the victor wins. This then rendered all previous scorelines obsolete, thus making semi-professional side Barnsley Town European Champions when the scores were all re-assessed. The following year (1999), Kazuo Ishigoru, the head of the World Binball Association (WBA) and novelist, famously announced that, "following the announcement of the Graaf-Becker ruling, things have just gotten a bit too silly." The ruling was repealed, the scorelines de-assessed, and Barnsley stripped of their title, much to the dismay of their fan. Binball's popularity has been on the rise, in this country at least, in recent years, perhaps because of Skysport's ever-popular 'Binball Hour', hosted by Geoffrey Boycott and featuring Just A Minute panelists Gyles Brandreth and Tony Hawks on hand to give their views on the weekend's Binball.