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polly on the mopstick

S

sga

Guest
Fraid not dennis,I think Polly on the mopstick was just before my time.But I'm sure if you could explain the rules a :roll: and let me know any equipment requiementsI,ll ask the missis if she fancies a game :roll:
 
For you young folk,
Poly on the mopstick as it was known to us oldies........
two teams,#1 team all had to face the fence and bend over one behind the other,supporting each other then #2 team would all jump on trying to get as many of the team on,before #1 team gave way,hope this makes a bit of sense other wise we shall have to all meet up and play the game,under my watchful eye :D
 
I'm not familiar with that game but from your description it sounds like a rugby scrum without the ball!
 
I know exactly what you mean, Dennis.
Polly on the mopstick 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10.
Polly on the mopstick off again. :wink:
You gotta be there :roll:
 
I remember

I do remember playing this game at school but I don't remember the name.
The missis says she's got to cook the dinner so she can't play today :shock:
 
Youv'e got it just about right Postie,and it was great fun as long as you weren't at the at the end of the line :)-)
 
In the Black Country we called this game ‘buggy’ or ‘buggy-warning’ - and it usually ended in tears; especially if some fat kid joined in!
 
We would play Poly on the mopstick at school during the break until the teachers banned it.
 
At various times in my life I found that Polly on the Mopstick was unheard of outside of Brum. Weirdly, I recently stumbled across a video clip, on youtube, of a bunch of kids in a school somewhere in South America playing exactly the same that we did. I'd love to know how THAT came about !
 
Baz,

A lot of Brits, many of them miners, went to Chile and Argentina in the early 1900s. How many from Brum, I know not. But there are plenty of English and Welsh names in today's generations in both countries.

Maurice :cool:
 
In this fascinating book (The Traditional Games of England, Scotland and Ireland )it is called Bung The Bucket.

The first time I came across it was at grammar school where we called it Polly On The Mopstick. It might have been a local variation but our first boy stood with his back against the wall forming some sort of buffer for the other boys in the line.

Possibly we did this when playing up against a hedge?
 
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Spargone said:
In this fascinating book (The Traditional Games of England, Scotland and Ireland )it is called Bung The Bucket.

The first time I came across it was at grammar school where we called it Polly On The Mopstick. It might have been a local variation but our first boy stood with his back against the wall forming some sort of buffer for the other boys in the line.

Possibly we did this when playing up against a hedge?
Click to expand...
Don't you remember playing this in the third and fourth years at Mapledene ? We also played British Bulldog and Red Rover
amongst many others.
 
jmadone said:
Don't you remember playing this in the third and fourth years at Mapledene ? We also played British Bulldog and Red Rover
amongst many others.
Click to expand...
No, I don't think I do. At the grammar school there was a sort of no-man's land between the tennis courts and the games field that was called the bank. We weren't allowed to go beyond the bank and it was a matter of some one-sided debate between us and the prefects as to where the bank ended and the pitches began! The bank, unlike the playground, gave a soft landing and so we only played it there. Mapledene playground was very unforgiving so I'm surprised that it would be played there. If it was I'm sure I didn't take part. British Bulldog, (running between a wall and a parallel line without getting 'caught'?), I remember and liked, Red Rover sound more like a girl's game to me but I might have played it. We must have played some sort of informal tag and there were certainly lots of skipping games.
 
carolina said:
British Bulldog
Click to expand...
Our British Bulldog consisted of one player in the centre ground between two opposing lines. The rest of the players would run from one boundary to the other where they would be safe. The single player would tag anyone that they could. Tagged players then joined the original player in intercepting the reverse mass run. Eventually everyone would be caught and the ended, the last person being the winner.
The picture above is the game that this thread is calling Polly On The Mopstick.
 
Spargone said:
Our British Bulldog consisted of one player in the centre ground between two opposing lines. The rest of the players would run from one boundary to the other where they would be safe. The single player would tag anyone that they could. Tagged players then joined the original player in intercepting the reverse mass run. Eventually everyone would be caught and the ended, the last person being the winner.
The picture above is the game that this thread is calling Polly On The Mopstick.
Click to expand...
Whoops... Thanks have edited.
 
We live in a rural Cretan village with lots of back alleys, so we don't tend to see many kid's games. However, tonight we were on the receiving end of Knock Down Ginger. Loud knocking on the shutter facing the lane, so I put the outside lights on, no one there, but was just in time to see a couple of boys running around the corner into the back lane. I didn't chase them, of course, as this old geezer would be hard put to catch a runaway tortoise! :) :) :)

Maurice :cool:
 
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sospiri said:
We live in a rural Cretan village with lots of back alleys, so we don't tend to see many kid's games. However, tonight we were on the receiving end of Knock Down Ginger. Loud knocking on the shutter facing the lane, so I put the outside lights one, no one there, but was just in time to see a couple of boys running around the corner into the back lane. I didn't chase them, of course, as this old geezer would be hard put to catch a runaway tortoise! :) :) :)

Maurice :cool:
Click to expand...
We had a hi-tech version. We tied black cotton to the door knocker, remote control, lots of fun, no risk!
 
Hi,

We played Polly on the Mopstick at school. Our version had one boy with his
back to the wall, and the rest of the team in single line scrum fashion.
We would chant 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, Polly on the Mopstick Amen,
and the other teams score would be the number who could leapfrog on,
and stay on during the chant.

Kind regards
Dave
 
Dave89 said:
Hi,

We played Polly on the Mopstick at school. Our version had one boy with his
back to the wall, and the rest of the team in single line scrum fashion.
We would chant 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, Polly on the Mopstick Amen,
and the other teams score would be the number who could leapfrog on,
and stay on during the chant.

Kind regards
Dave
Click to expand...
As I remember it, the team that were "receiving" had to hold up to a chant of "Polly on the mopstick, one two three". The tactics were for the attacking team to wait till the end then send in the fattest kid to cause a collapse. As for British Bulldog, one lonely bloke had to stand facing a stampeding horde. Having caught one of them, there was then two to face the horde, and so on. In the army there was a similar version of this game, called Murder Ball, but that was more murderous.
 
We used to play a game called Murder Ball in PE lessons at grammar school; there was a mat at each end of the gym, the class was divided into two teams, and a basketball was thrown by the PE teacher into the air in the middle of the gym. The object of the game was to land the ball on the opposing team's mat. The rules.....what rules? Anything short of actually breaking a limb or gouging out an eye was OK.

I wonder what today's parents would make of that......
 
I thought it was polly up the mopstick but 'on' makes more sense. Saw it being played on 'Victorians on film' on Chanel 5 a few days ago. Wife said she'd never heard of it but then she's from Smethwick so what would she know? It does seem to fit with previous comments that it was a game we played in Brum and it's fame hadn't spread as far as Cape Hill. I guess I was playing it in the 50s.
Also played British Bulldog which could finish in a fight. There was a similar game to bulldog where you hopped across on one leg with your arms folded and had to knock an opponent onto his two legs (or knock him over). I can imagine all of these games have been well and truly banned.
 
Murder ball and British Bulldog played in Smethwick in the scouts and at school. We played Pack Horses which seems identical to Polly on a Mopstick, except that one boy has his back to the wall and supports the boy's head who makes a back in front of him. You can make a back of three lads then the opposing team jump on and shout Pack Horses, Pack Horses 1,2,3 before the horses collapse.
 
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