SODDEN BALLS AND SOGGY BOTTOMS

 Watching FIFA World Cup football I'm intrigued at how far the players can kick the ball and at how good the balls are nowadays.

The same goes for rugby balls.

Gone are the days of heavy, permeable leather balls that go soft in the wet and become slimy.

In the old days, my days, soccer balls, when wet weighed 'a ton' and were hard to kick and manoeuvre. Rugby balls were also hard to kick and with the slime on the wet leather were hard to catch and hold.

 I was interested to know whether the old (dry) balls weighed any more than the modern (dry) balls and found this:

"It is a myth that the modern ball is lighter than the balls used in the past.

Since 1937, the dry weight of the ball has been specified by Law 2: 14-16oz. Prior to that, the rules governing the ball’s dry weight specified something lighter – 13-15oz.

This goes for the new ball used in 2010 just as much as it did for the 1966 ball. Whenever you read a comment along the lines of “I’d like to see modern players heading the leather pudding the ’66 boys had to put up with” you can assume that they don’t know what they’re talking about.

What has changed are (1) the material from which the ball is made, and thus the ability of the ball to avoid weight gain during the game through water absorption, and (2) the aerodynamics of the ball i.e. the smoothness of the surface.

The new ball isn’t lighter in of itself – which is what people seem to be assuming: but the new ball won’t get so wet in play. So in the broad sunshine of the ’66 World Cup Final, the famous orange balls were the same weight as the ones we see today. And so it has been on every dry day, on every dry pitch, since the balls were first standardized in the early 1870s."

          - James Hamilton on Sport History and Psychology

OK, that makes sense but what has also changed, even down to the basic club and school level, is the quality of playing fields nowadays with proper  construction, drainage and maintenance. Players usually don't have to play in the quagmires we did where the brown balls were hard to find in the brown mud.

Back in the day, when trying to 'head' a sodden soccer ball you were just as likely to knock yourself out or get a dislocated neck. How different things might have been if we had the 'waterproofed' balls that today's players use.