World conker champion found with steel chestnut, cleared of cheating

It's not a sport, it's something that kids used to do pre 1950s. People were poor, didn't have manufactured "stuff", so they made their own toys out of simple things like stones, sticks, old wheels etc Football was likely popular because a single ball could keep a while bunch of kids happy for an afternoon (if someone could actually afford a ball).

I'm almost 50, and to me the image of boys playing conkers only comes from books or TV based in early 1900s UK. I've never actually seen anyone play it.

And nowadays people don't really grow up at all. They continue playing right into adulthood and old age, with luxury toys.

My kids play conkers. They also have games consoles and other luxury toys.

Kids just love to play.

I’m 47 and played conkers in school on merseyside.

The local ‘conker trees’ were famous!

I grew up in the 90s and we played conkers.

The main detail I remember was that soaking them in vinegar was supposed to make them stronger!

I played conkers in the 1990s. Everyone did.

Money has nothing to do with it, most of my friends had computers, some had those mini cars to drive — it was a wealthy area.

> if someone could actually afford a ball

Round here, in the olden days the kids would fashion a crude type of ball called "basse" by cutting up a broken bicycle inner tube into a bunch of small rings, threading all the rings on a piece of string and tying this mess up in a particular way to form a roughly spherical object.

It does not roll well at all, but the kids stand around in a circle and kick the basse around to each other, trying to keep it in the air. If you cause it to fall to the ground, you lose.

> I'm almost 50, and to me the image of boys playing conkers only comes from books or TV based in early 1900s UK. I've never actually seen anyone play it.

Extremely common for kids to play this at least into the mid 2000s where i'm from, i moved away so i don't know if they still do

> I'm almost 50, and to me the image of boys playing conkers only comes from books or TV based in early 1900s UK. I've never actually seen anyone play it.

Did you grow up in a city? I'm mid 30s and we used to regularly play conkers in the village where I grew up.

Yeah, very much fron the 1950's 'Beano' era, but it did still go on in the mid 90s, at least in a wild throwing them about the place as entertainment. It was indeed a simpler time.

A lot more kids in the background smoking cigarettes around the bike sheds as well, but that's another story :)

I'm an 80s kid and we passionately played conkers at my primary school. We used to hang them on shoe laces or string, by burning a hole through the middle with a heated awl or kebab rod.

Cheating was always rife with people using all manner of techniques to try to preserve and strengthen their conkers: soaking in vinegar, baking them, coating in nail varnish, &c.

Pretty sad to hear it's fallen out of fashion, as it was good, cheap fun and, with long enough string, not very dangerous.

Another voice here of someone (in my 30s) who played conkers growing up. Was great fun!

I think whether or not you grew up with a significant local population of 'conker trees' probably had a lot more to do with it than age. I'm younger than you (and didn't grow up 'poor') and we played too, 'pre-50s' is ridiculous.

> And nowadays people don't really grow up at all. They continue playing right into adulthood and old age, with luxury toys.

It would be nice if we stopped stigmatising play. Growing up doesn't mean we stop playing. Acting grown-up might mean stop playing, but it's just that — an act, and a likely childish one. Real adults don't give up on what brings them joy.

I played conkers in the 90's, my kids (7 and 10) play conkers now. We even have debates on whether applying nail polish is considered cheating - it is, it totally is! What's more, I was brought up in a poor area of Manchester, they've been brought up in quite an affluent area of Oxfordshire - so couldn't be any different!

I played conkers in the 80s, everybody in the school did. People had tricks like coating their conkers in gloss etc. but it was still a widespread game. Played football and British bulldog type stuff too but conkers came in season for a bit every year.

Back when I was a teenager, I used to also have similar thoughts as the person you replied to about not playing with toys because it was childish behavior.

Luckily, I grew out of that and I do not feel self conscious when playing as an adult or being goofy.

> I've never actually seen anyone play it.

Inner-city kid, same age as you, and it was everywhere. Not universal, I guess.

I went to first school (3 tier system, first, middle, high) in the 1970s and we played conkers in the school yard in the 1970s, and into the mid 80s in middle school too. By the time I reached high school they'd been banned.

I see parents and children collecting horse chestnuts in the local market square and arboretum still today though, and it brings back fond memories of rapped knuckles and entanglement "clingy-niner's" or "clinchies" in some games, depending who you were playing with.

>To carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

- C. S. Lewis

I don’t mind the nit on word choice but in my mind a game becomes a sport by the existence of a Championship match and title.

Also, I think this follows how most sports come to be. They are started as child play, when we have the time/leisure/energy, then they eventually become something some of us want to continue with as adults and the rest of us will pay to watch because we enjoy the sport so much (often fostered during youth play).

There are dozens of sports that I have no interest in simply because I wasn’t exposed to them as a kid. As an older American, we did not play Soccer(football) when I was a kid. It’s pretty popular now and my kid has had me go to professional games and such but I still just don’t really understand the game/rules/strategy or fully appreciate the difficulty of things that occur. I could learn I suppose but I still just have little effort in doing so as a middle aged person. I could say the same about Cricket and a handful of other sports that I never played as a kid but know are popular elsewhere. Likewise, when people move to the US, it usually takes them a while and likely never fully get into American Football and Baseball. Basketball has become more global and so I do expats that follow that sport. More likely than not, they follow the sports that interested them as a kid and just live with the time zone issue.

A minor correction (though I agree with all the rest of your comment): baseball is also popular in several countries, just a different set of countries than basketball (most of them are in Latin America or East Asia).