Cascoland Journal
Saturday 11 March
For the past two weeks a fierce soccer competition took place between
youth football teams from New Crossroads. Inside an arena made out of
beer crates, teams battled for the honor of winning the Line Football
Trophy. Dutch artist Yarre Stooker introduced his no physical contact
version of the world’s most popular game as his contribution to
Cascoland. It was without doubt a crowd puller.
Over the past two weeks the youth of New Crossroads have learned a new
game. It might resemble soccer, but in many ways the rules of the game
are quite different. While building this 15 by 5 meter line football arena
many children soon found out that it would be a playground to show their
dribbling skills to an enthusiastic audience. To make the atmosphere even
more festive a big sound system blasted modern beats from Europe and South
Africa.
In the center of it all stood Dutch artist Yarre Stooker, dressed in a
black referee outfit. Every participant got a leaflet with instructions
on how to play. No physical contact, no trespassing over the line of your
own designated area. If you did so Mister Ref would whistle and shout
´sectionball’, wich means penalty!. Two teams of three players
were allowed to use the boarding of the arena to confuse the opponent
and finally the goalkeeper.
Besides it being quite an experience for the children of New Crossroads,
Yarre was also pleasantly surprised that so many children turned up to
play. Although he already introduced Line Football in The Netherlands,
the number of people playing in New Crossroads far exceeded that of the
competition in his home country. He says: ´At first there were so
many youngsters that wanted to compete that I thought ``how will I ever
pull this thing off?” But, with the help of local football coaches
like Pietersen we got the youth to compete in an organized manner’.
Yarre had to improvise much more in New Crossroads. He says: ´In
The Netherlands I had a small team of professionals who built the arena
for me. Here I had to do it by myself. Of course there where many children
willing to help out.´
The inspiration behind the artistic concept of Line Football has a long
history. For many years Yarre had a special affection for a Dutch soccer
goalkeeper who played for a short while in the national team. He says:
´Jan van Beveren was something of an anti-hero. In my eyes he was
the best goalkeeper The Netherlands ever had. But because he had a personal
conflict with Johan Cruyff, the most famous player ever in my country,
he was dumped. To me Van Beveren was a player with elegance, a real performer.´
Throughout the years Yarre used the portrait of Van Beveren in his work.
He took his own portrait to blend it with that of Van Beveren. He says:
´The idea of heroes attracts me very much. One day they might be
very famous but the next they might fall out of grace. I want to confront
my audience with that. Nowadays anybody can become a star. Look at television
programs like Idols. We constantly want to create heroes. So that is also
the thought behind line football in New Crossroads. Also here everybody
dreams to be a star. By playing in my football arena they are getting
an audience and when they win they are also stars.´
His idea of line football all started as an imaginative artistic concept.
He made an Internet website and pretended that line football really existed
and that it originally came from Australia. Each week he came up with
fake results of fake teams that were playing. Many people believed it
was really true. That dream is slowly becoming reality now. He says: ´I
was pleasantly surprised when a football coach from here said he wanted
to use my line football concept as a training exercise for his young players.
He is very welcome to do so.´
When he went to SAB Breweries in Cape Town to ask them to sponsor him
with blue beer crates for his line football arena they readily agreed.
After a few days into the competition Yarre already got his own nickname,
Mister Ref. He even hears children in New Crossroads sing his line football
tune, composed especially for this tournament.
Yarre building his linefootball arena
Preliminary tournament games
Arena
Mister Ref looking for heroes
participating teams menís competition
Entrance to arena
Linefootball tournament in action
Goal kick
winners youth finals
