Kerbsies

Does anyone remember playing this when they were a kid. Mid-late 80's? You and a friend stood on opposite kerbs, one person threw a ball towards the kerbstone. If it didn't rebound off the kerb, the next player took their shot. If it DID rebound however, you stepped up to the half-way line and kept going til you missed. If you missed from the half-way line, your opponent had to try and catch the ball and hit you with it, thus taking all your points you just scored.
It was a wicked game and I don't see any kids playing it anymore. Was it a local thing? Or has anyone else played it and if so where?

Ps: I woz da champ on mi'estate and I'll take on all challengers before anyone gets cheeky!!!

Johnny_the_fox

classic.

we did it if you caught the ball (without it bouncing) - when it hit the Kerb, you would double your points.

Also different scores for different types of throwing the ball i.e. over you head, your back to the other player. etc.

Yeah dude, thats it!! What a great game!! If you caught the ball with two hands, you doubled your points, caught it with one hand tripled..


Ahh memories...

woosaysdan

yeah its a great game!!! its a shame people dont play it any more!!!

Blisterman

I would have played, except We would have been hit by a car.

woosaysdan

woosaysdan wrote:

yeah its a great game!!! its a shame people dont play it any more!!!

LOL, Wouldn't it be Fcukin hiarious if you did look out your window and saw someone in their mid 20's playing... ROFL.. It just doesn't really carry with age



Oh I need a drink....

meepmeep

I saw 2 kids playing that in front of my house the other day!

Brought back memories.....

We had a league and everything! Was about 25 of us

woosaysdan

i going to play it later on tonight!!!

Shrimp

We did it so that when it hit the curb it had to come back to you as in once it passed the half way line in the road. Also when you hit the person when they missed their shot from close up then that was called a "bus-stop"... donno why really?

Ok this is a little of topic! But Has anyone ever heard of the game "Squares"?? I'm pretty sure it was invented by me and the lads around where i'm from.. Maybe i'm wrong! But that was a FOCKING AMAZING game, I'd play it anyday! Ah, the memories!

woosaysdan

Shrimp wrote:

Also when you hit the person when they missed their shot from close up then that was called a "bus-stop"... donno why really?

had you anything to do with dublin bus???:D

sanncoo

Loved the game kerbsies....was it called that! But know the game you are talking about. Somedays the arms would be falling out of their sockets from playing it all day!

Shrimp

Ok I'm guessing nobody heard of Squares?

What about... Wall Ball.. or.. Walls.. or.. Wall Call? All the same Idea!

Shrimp

bubbles. wrote:

Its been years since I've seen kerbsies being played... kids around here are into boring sports involving a ball.. things like soccer. Lack of imagination!

Kerbs Involves a ball... are you suggesting something?

woosaysdan

Shrimp wrote:

Ok I'm guessing nobody heard of Squares?

What about... Wall Ball.. or.. Walls.. or.. Wall Call? All the same Idea!

yeah i liked that game too

Shrimp

Yep... twas good, especially when you could kick it really hard but just skimming it along the wall, twould go on form ages!

Oriel

Kerbsies - hahahaha.
I'm going to play that over Christmas, when my mates get back.

Remember the arguments when the ball didn't really hit the "kerb" but bounced up and the person caugh it - when there was always the chance of it falling back down again an hitting the kerb again...

...brings are tear to my eye.

Healio

ah yeah it was simply kerbs in my area, then we also had squares and wall ball we called it splat, but our classic game is and always has been POLES. Down to the basketball court, the two poles were efeectively the goals, wait til the christmas break, then it'll be poles allday everyday, really improves your shooting accuracy aswell.

billy the squid

Shrimp wrote:

Ok I'm guessing nobody heard of Squares?

What about... Wall Ball.. or.. Walls.. or.. Wall Call? All the same Idea!

is squares anything like hopscotch?

Healio

No not at all, basically you draw a few squares, usually a two by two like a '+' with a box around it, or on my not very well maintained roads the cracks had formed a sort of 4 squared square, then one person would kick the ball from their square into one of the others, then that person had one bounce(but as many keepie uppies as (s)he liked) to get the ball out of his/her square and into someone else's. if they failed to do so, depending on region you would gain/lose a point, my place used to lose from 5 down. if you simply rolled it along it was called a rollie, and depending on intent a point was possibly deducted. the real skill was as shrimp says getting it to bounce as low as possible almost skidding but not quite getting a rollie! first one to lose all lives got the dogs life. those were the days!!

Jip

We called Kerbsies 'Paths', we were cheeky little ****s when I think about it because we used to throw the ball over passing cars to get even more bonus points

Cactus Col

remember usually having games of squares with 6 people so it was 2 sqauares, by 2 by 2, think you had a certain amount of lifes until it finally came down to 2 people. (although I don't remember people actually winning)

And Kerbs was brilliant, should be an olympic sport.

Makaveli

Yeah played kerbs, never called it kerbsies.
It had to cross the middle line in the road if it did you got a point, if you caught it before it bounced you got 2, then you got to go in the middle. First to 20 won, swap sides at 10. If someone threw the ball and it hit the kerb and the other person caught it they then got to go in the middle. If it bounced before hitting the kerb the other person got to go in the middle. If you put your foot on the road when throwing the ball the other person got to go in the middle.

Squares too, we didn't need to draw square though as the tar on the road divided it up nicely. Played the exact same rules as Healio too. It would usually cause fights aswell, because people got really pissed off if you kept going for them, and we used to build alliances during games too, so we could pick people off. Usually played between 4 and 8 people.

The_B_Man

used to play kerbs all the time. i was the best. from wat i remember, if u throw it over your head backwards and you hit the kerb, you'd win, as long as it came back over to your side of the road!
used to play squares al the time except we used 4 squares in the road, A,B,C and D. the person in A always served the ball and, say, if the person in B lost a point, they'd go down to D, if they lost again in D, they'd be substituted for the person waitin on the sides. everytime someone above you lost a point, you'd move up a sqaure til u got to A.

_blank_

We played Kerbs sure, everyone did.

But we played two variations on the "Squares" theme.

1. ABC : As already described, there were so many of us, it went up to "F", so six players, and the one in "A" was the "Server". One bounce, and as many Keepy-Uppies to get the ball into another square, or else you were "relegated" in to the "F" square, and everyone moved up. Squares arranged like this. A and B beside one another. C under A, and D under B, then E under C, and F under D, in a kind of 2x3 formation. Also, if it bounced in your square, and then out of bounds, you were relegated. The person in "F" had 3 lives, and would be either replaced by another player, get a beating, or both if they lost the three lives. If you encroached in another persons square, thereby causing them to miss the ball, you got relegated. Great fun standing on the edge of someone else's square

2. Squares : Again, six squares, but this time, no movement, only points.

Quick edit, about another game we played. "Halfway". Basically we'd have 2 goals set up, either side of the road, but you couldn't cross the "halfway" line. You had to take shots etc, and see if you could score. One of my best memories, we had leagues of that.

swalsh

what a great game used to play in between all the football or wallball matches when younger. invited my yougher brother for a game during last summer and got a look that seemed he thought i was crazy...throwing a ball at a kerbv when there is playstation to be played...hah! little sh1t

Bert Fever

Yeah, we used to play "Kerbs". Although we got extra points for throws over cars etc... Dangerous but you got 50 points over a car i think... 100 if you cought it!

good times...

Kingsize

about 6 or seven years ago i had a graeat game of kerbs that lasted about 2 and a half hours.
i went to visit my folks but there was nobody home & i had no key!
so i just joined in with some of the kids on the road.
i got quite addicted actually, came back for more the next week.
i'd love to see it as an exhibition sport at the olympics, you could play it at the cycling track just to "keep it real".

nmrd600

yeah, i remeber that, but for me it was more the mid-late 90's. some to think of it, i don't know why i'm in the retro forum, but it didn't die in the 80's, it transended (my word of the day) decades and still kicked ass.
we had extra points for throwing it over our heads, or between our legs, or doing something like spinning round 3 times before throwing it. anything to make it harder. ah, good times......

d22ontour

it was just kerbs or paths to us

kerbsies

newgrange

We called it 'Kerbs' and played in Raheny in the mid 70s.
We had an 'overall win' which was when the ball would bounce off the first kerb, and then bounce across to the opposite kerb and bounce off it. They were not as difficult to do as they sound.
There were other silly shots like under one leg, and over your head, and backwards, all scoring different points, though of course the 'overall win' would put the mockers on an opponent's high score.
Cars killed it off.

SimonMaher

Ah, Kerbs, classic!

Im scared to say that I played Kerbs through my exams in College (as a "mature" student). Kept us sane in between cramming like bejaysus. All the local kids in the area ended up playing it afterwards...even shouting "carsies" and "vansies" when one would appear.

And as for "wall ball". Philistines. Its slammers!

Pete

Swarfboy

newgrange wrote:

We had an 'overall win' which was when the ball would bounce off the first kerb, and then bounce across to the opposite kerb and bounce off it. They were not as difficult to do as they sound.

Bang on the mark my man... the old double bounce "game over" remember it well and thought I was king like everyone else... last game I had was bout 10 years ago... must have another go... and 6 player squares I remember with a rotational thing going on just to complicate things...
Did anybody have a game that involved the squares and bikes and trying to make the other person put a foot down or fall.....
We had one guy on the road that was a master because he just used to wizz around doin 90 and he'd even crash into ya and make ya fall over but stilll manage to keep goin...
I wonder if he utilised his talent...

Scruff

Ah kerbs....we played with the rule that if you scored 3 in a row from the middle you had to go down on one knee and if ye scored 5 in a row you had to go down on both.
This might give the person trying to catch it an unfair advantage of hitting you and stealing points so we also had a rule where the game was played between two marks on the kerb so ye could try and send the catcher the worng way.

another favourite in my neighbourhood was 52 bonkers.
ahhh the memories....sniff!