Winamp & Shoutcast Forums - is it wrong to LOL 7(ish)? - it's football jim, but not as we know it...

Quote:

Quokka Soccer
And this is? The new sport from down under that's sweeping the country.
Really? I'd never heard of it. OK, so it's sweeping a small island off the coast of Australia.

Will it catch on? Probably not. It's illegal. And you need a quokka to play.

So what's a quokka? Setonix brachyurus. A miniature brown wallaby the size of a cat. Bumbling and very trusting of people.

Sweet. So how do you play? You kick it to death.

Is that it? More or less. Some people prefer to beat it with sticks.

Doesn't it fight back? No. Its main survival tactic is to roll up into a ball.

You could see that as tempting fate. Sometimes, evolution deals a rubbish hand.

And you just find them on this one island? Nowadays, yes. When the first Europeans arrived, they were common all over southwest Australia.

Hmm. Sounds like that took a lot of quokka matches. The most recent one was last week; 10 of them were found dead on the island's sports ground.

Who won? Don't be flippant. The island's called Rottnest, by the way.

You're wanting to explain what that means, aren't you? It means rats' nest. Dutch explorers thought the quokkas were rats. Which perhaps explains the animosity.

Isn't something being done to stop it? You can be fined £3,500 for harming them but, like bare-knuckle boxing and cock-fighting, it's still an underground sport.

Does it happen often? It's an Aussie tradition. Young hoons from Perth and Fremantle get beered up on lager and head out to Rottnest every summer.

For some harmless high-spirited fun? You could say that.

What's a hoon? It's an Australian term for a stupid person given to drinking and aggression.

Not to be confused with pommy defence secretary Geoff Hoon? Got it in one.