Fourfourtwo plays Sepak Takraw
It’s kung-fu-foot-volleyball, and we’re a bit scared
His overhead kick looked great, but at a nonleague ground in north London – or the sports centre next door, to be precise – a lad named Chrissy might have just done himself a mischief. Hurtling sideways, he’d leapt like a tracksuited salmon and scissor-kicked a tiny leather ball over a net quite spectacularly. Unfortunately he didn’t give much consideration to the landing. “Careful!” yelps a nearby coach as Chrissy misses the crashmats and collapses into a crumpled heap on a hard floor. The sports hall holds its breath.
These are the hazards of Sepak Takraw, an almost mythical game of acrobatic super-tekkers that’s not for the faint-hearted, nor the leaden-footed. Takraw is ‘Asia’s best-kept secret’ according to western advocates – football meets martial arts, via a hard ball and a volleyball court. It makes Shaolin Soccer look like Dad’s Army.
“I’ve spent time training with top-level Thai players and it can be brutal,” says Daniel Ellen-barwell, a Takraw commentator and Australia international. “Their skills and athleticism are just phenomenal, given the pace at which the ball is delivered to you.”
Cracking stuff, although you’re surely thinking: ‘If this sport exists, why am I playing badminton?’ Good question. British Takraw has a turbulent history, it transpires, taking in the Korean armed forces, anxious footballers and an infuriated Rob Lowe. No, not the Hollywood Rob Lowe. This one’s a Brit who has been trying to launch a UK national team for years.
“If we had a team, it wouldn’t matter how good they are – they’d be straight into the World Cup,” he says. Governing body ISTAF are, says Lowe, “very keen for new teams to get involved” before the second Takraw World Cup (there’s the annual Kings Cup, too). “The door’s open. That’s the dream.”
Before we all start the training, then, what exactly is Sepak Takraw?
Versions of it have been played across southern Asia for centuries – there’s a Malay legend about the sultan’s son stabbing one unfortunate opponent – but the now-unified game is basically hands-free volleyball: three players per side, two set-ups, then smash! For the top teams, that final shot is invariably a breathtaking overhead kick from a player called, rather brilliantly, the ‘killer’, while a defender achieves similar altitude trying to block it. The catchy slogan? ‘Fight Gravity’.
Takraw is still heavily Asia-oriented in the Super Series starting in March, a sort of international Champions League that finishes in October. But there’s a solid European season now, which also kicks off this month and builds towards December’s Chicken Cup, in Cologne. The quirky tournament is named after its trophy, a golden chicken nicked from a pop band, and was co-founded by the most recognisable player in Germany: the bald, headbanded, admirably honest Gunnar Vogt. “I personally played Thailand, Myanmar, [South] Korea, Indonesia twice and Malaysia a few times – well, we can’t beat any of them,” says Vogt. “Thailand were brutal. They don’t give you a chance.”
Takraw’s golden boy is Thailand’s Pornchai Kaokaew. “He just makes the impossible look effortless,” gushes Australia’s Ellen-barwell. Try Googling ‘Pornchai’ (careful…) and watch that highlights reel. You’ll believe a man can fly.
The top team outside Asia are the USA. “We’re 12th,” explains veteran captain Tony Ontam, “of 31 countries that compete.” How are his roll spikes? “Average,” he says. “I can spike a Takraw ball with my foot at 8ft above the ground and land safely with my kicking foot.” That is a bit better than our ‘average’.
And Britain? Our association has “pretty much dissolved”, sighs Lowe, but there is hope. In April the UK’S own attempt at a Chicken Cup launches at Newcastle University, with several major teams flying in. It’s run by a student, John Haswell, who discovered the sport on a gap year in Borneo and then launched a university society, saying: “At the freshers’ fair I showed a video of Malaysia vs Thailand and people couldn’t believe it – it was busy all day.” That tournament should be well worth watching – Haswell’s Newcastle side includes two useful Malaysian players – but getting spectators to actually try Takraw is trickier. Those awesome videos can be off-putting, ironically.
“People look at it and go: ‘I can’t do that!’” says Lowe, who’s now targeting football-loving gymnasts, having decided footballers are wussy. “They are worried about injuring themselves,” he says. “We get that quite a lot.”
Well, let’s see. Eager to inspire new talent, Fourfourtwo is staging our own Takraw try-out. We’re at Ware FC in Hertfordshire – sometime home to
Spurs Ladies and veterans – as they’ve a handy sports centre and some enthusiastic academy kids. “It’s fine at that age, isn’t it?” grins Ken Charlery, the well-travelled striker and now Ware boss. “They just bounce back up.”
Tellingly, Charlery is not letting us anywhere near his first team. But then, it isn’t actually acrobatics that cause most Takraw injuries. For safety’s sake we’re using a lower net and crashmats, but most importantly we’re using a leather ball. The tournament ones are, says Lowe, “woven plastic and very hard – one of the reactions we get is: ‘Do people actually head this?’”
Indeed, the worst injury ‘Captain America’ Tony Ontam can remember was a player “hit on his eyebrow by a spiking ball at a speed of around 90kph [55mph] – he went to the emergency room to check for a brain injury.”
Even spectators aren’t safe. “I’ve seen people sat on the side and the ball has caught them unawares, right in the face,” says Haswell. “Actually, that was my housemate, so I found it quite amusing.”
No such worries here: our ball is borrowed from that edgy footy phenomenon, Soccer Tots. Crashmats jigsawed together, the inaugural Fourfourtwo Quasi-sepak Takraw Invitational can begin, featuring the self-styled Bad Boys vs the Huckleberries, who are named after a local fast-food joint. We know who our money’s on.
In fact it’s surprisingly competitive and compelling, after a tentative beginning, as the ball starts ricocheting off walls as if it’s in a videogame. At one point a particularly agile volleyer, floppy-haired Mario, executes a unique one-two, flamboyantly miskicking so that the ball rockets upwards, hits a roof beam and
then rebounds straight
back onto his foot. Uproar! “That,” nods a beaming team-mate, “was tek-oslovakia.”
We lose track of the score as the game becomes a madcap volley exhibition, but Chrissy wins Man of the Match: he did bounce back up, thankfully, and was soon gleefully roll-spiking again.
Takraw goes down very well here; it’s just a shame nobody can remember what it’s called. “That’s a big issue,” admits Haswell. “In Canada they call it ‘kick volleyball’, which helps.” Changing names is a no-no. “I’ve said things [online],” says Lowe, “where I’ve left out ‘Sepak’ and just said ‘Takraw’. I got angry messages from people on Facebook, saying: ‘You’re taking away our culture!’” Poor Lowe does sound a bit low, having plugged away thanklessly for years with little support from the sport’s hierarchy. All that British Takraw really needs is one committed coach, he reckons – “someone for it to form around.”
“We had the son of one of the women’s South Korean national squad,” Lowe reveals. “He came over to learn English and was very keen.” What happened? “He got called up for national service and never came back.” That’s what they call a bad Korea move.
So if you’re a cracking Sepak Takraw coach and fancy taking Britain to a major tournament, that door is still open. True, there isn’t actually a team yet, but honestly, most incoming football gaffers would envy that arrangement. It makes the clearout so much easier.