The Dangerous Book for Boys Page 4

  Clothing. Players wear soccer shirts, shorts, shin guards under long socks, and soccer cleats. Goalkeepers wear different-colored uniforms.

  The referee. All decisions by the referee are final. Powers include the ability to give a verbal warning, a more serious yellow card warning, or a red card, which results in immediate expulsion. A second yellow card is equivalent to a red. The referee also acts as timekeeper for the match and controls any restarts after stopped play.

  Assistant referees (linesmen). These indicate with a raised flag when a ball has crossed the lines and gone out of play, and let the referee know which side is to take the corner, goal kick, or throw-in. They also raise their flags to indicate when a player may be penalized for being in an offside position.

  Duration. Two halves of forty-five minutes, with a halftime interval of no more than fifteen minutes.

  Starting. Whichever team wins a coin toss kicks off and begins play. The ball returns to the center spot after a goal and at the start of the second half. All opposing players must be in their own half at kickoff—at least ten yards (9.15 m) from the ball.

  In and out. The ball is out of play when it crosses any of the touchlines or goal lines, or if play has been stopped by the referee. It is in play at all other times.

  Scoring. The whole ball has to pass over the goal line. If a member of the defending team knocks it in by accident, it is an “own goal” and still valid. Whoever scores the most goals wins.

  Offside. The offside rule is designed to stop players from hanging around the goal of their opponents, waiting for a long ball to come to them. A player is given offside if the ball is passed to him while he is nearer to the goal than the ball and the second-last defender. Note that players are allowed to sit on the goal line if they want, but the ball cannot come to them without offside being called by the referee. An “offside trap” occurs when defenders deliberately move up the field to leave a forward player in a position where he cannot take the ball without being called offside. It is not an offside offense if the ball comes to a player from a throw-in, a goal kick, or a corner kick.

  Fouls. Direct and indirect free kicks can be given to the opposing team if the referee judges that a foul has been committed. The kick is taken from where the foul occurred, so if it is close to the opponent’s goal, the game can easily hinge on the outcome. Fouls can range from touching the ball with the hands to kicking an opponent. In addition, the player can be cautioned or sent off depending on the offense.

  Free kicks. Direct free kicks can be a shot at goal if the spot is close enough, so are given for more serious fouls. The ball is stationary when kicked. Opposing players are not allowed closer than 10 yards (9.15 m), which has come to mean in practice that the opposing team put a wall of players ten yards from the spot to obscure the kicker’s vision.Indirect free kicks cannot be directly at goal, but must first be passed to another player.

  Penalties. These are awarded for the same offenses as direct free kicks—if the offense happens inside the penalty area of the opposing team. This is to prevent what are known as “professional fouls,” where an attacker is brought down deliberately to stop him scoring.The goalkeeper must remain on his goal line between the posts until the ball has been kicked. Other players must be outside the penalty area and at least ten yards from the penalty spot—that’s why there’s an arc on the penalty area.

  The penalty must be a single strike at the goal. As long as it goes in, it can hit the posts and/or goalkeeper as well. In the normal run of play, a penalty kick that rebounds off the keeper is back in play and can be struck again. In a penalty shoot-out, this does not apply and there is only one chance to score.

  Throw-ins. A player must face inward to the field and have both feet on the ground, on or behind the touchline. Both hands must be used and the ball must be delivered from behind the head. The thrower must pass the ball to another player before he can touch it again.

  Goal kicks. These are given when the opposing team kicks the ball over the opposing goal line, after a missed shot at goal, for example. The goal kick is taken from anywhere within the goal area and the ball must pass out of the penalty area before another player can touch it.

  Corner kicks. These are given when a member of the defending team knocks the ball over his own goal line. The goalkeeper may do this in the process of saving a goal, for example, or a defender may do it quite deliberately to prevent a shot reaching goal. Many goals are scored from corner kicks, so the tension is always high when one is given.Defending players must remain at least 10 yards (9.15 m) from the ball until it is kicked. In practice, they group themselves around the goalmouth. Defenders work hard to prevent attackers finding a free space. Attackers work to drop their marking defender, get the ball as it comes in, and either head or kick it into the goal. A goalkeeper is hard-pressed during corners. Visibility is reduced due to the number of people involved and the ball can come from almost anywhere with very little time to react.

  OTHER POINTS OF INTEREST

  The goalkeeper is the only player able to use his hands. However, apart from the lower arms and hands, any other part of the body can be used to help control the ball.

  If the game must be played to a conclusion (in a World Cup, for example), extra time can be given. There are various forms of this, but it usually involves two halves of fifteen minutes each. If the scores are still tied at the end of extra time, a penalty shootout is used to decide the winner. Five prearranged players take it in turns to shoot at the goal. If the scores are still tied, it goes to sudden-death penalties, one after the other until a winner is found.

  One advantage that soccer has over rugby and baseball is the fact that if you have a wall, you can practice soccer forever. The other games really need someone else. There are many ball skills that must be experienced to be learned. It’s all very well reading that you can bend the ball from right to left in the air by striking the bottom half of the right side of the ball with the inside of your foot, or left to right by using the outside of your foot on the bottom half of the left side of the ball. Realistically, though, to make it work, you’ll have to spend many, many hours practicing. This is true of any sport—and for that matter any skill of any kind. If you want to be good at something, do it regularly. It’s an old, old phrase, but “practice makes perfect” is as true today as it was hundreds of years ago. Natural-born skill is all very well, but it will only take you so far against someone who has practiced every day at something he loves.

  Dinosaurs

  THE TERM “dinosaur” means “terrible lizard,” coined by a British scientist, Richard Owen, in 1842. These reptiles roamed the earth for over a hundred and fifty million years, then mysteriously died out. They varied from fierce killers to gentle plant eaters.

  The largest dinosaurs were also the largest land animals ever to have existed. In 1907, the immense bones of a Brachiosaurus were discovered in East Africa. When alive, the animal would have been 75 ft (23 m) long and weighed between fifty and ninety tons. Its shoulder height would have been 21 ft (6.4 m) off the ground. These giants rivaled the largest whales in our present-day oceans. In comparison, the largest living land animals today, elephants, weigh only five tons!

  Brachiosaurus – the “Arm lizard.”

  The Age of the Dinosaurs

  The age of the dinosaurs is known as the Mesozoic era. This stretched from 248 to 65 million years ago. It divides into three separate time spans: the Triassic, the Jurassic, and the Cretaceous. At the start of the Mesozoic era all the continents of today’s Earth were joined together in one supercontinent—Pangaea. This was surrounded by a massive ocean called Panthalassa. These names sound quite impressive until you realize they mean “the whole earth” and “the whole sea.” The German geophysicist Alfred Wegener first came up with the theory of moving tectonic plates, or “continental drift,” in 1912. He examined similarities in rocks found as far apart as Brazil and southern Africa and realized they came from a single landmass.

  The
Triassic world saw the first small dinosaurs, walking on their hind legs. This period lasted from 248 to 206 million years ago. Over millions of years Pangaea split into continents and drifted apart. After separation, different groups of dinosaurs evolved on each continent during the Jurassic period from 206 to 144 million years ago. This was the era of the giants. Huge herbivorous dinosaurs roamed in forests and grassland that covered entire continents.

  The continental “plates” are still moving today. In fact, wherever an area is prone to earthquakes or volcanoes, the cause is almost always one plate pushing against another, sometimes deep under the sea. The vast mountain ranges of the Andes and the Rockies were formed in this way.

  The Cretaceous period lasted from 144 to 65 million years ago. This age included armored plant eaters like Triceratops, browsers like Hadrosaur and huge meat eaters like the Tyrannosaurus rex.

  The seas, too, were filled with predators and prey that were very different from the inhabitants of today—except for sharks, oddly enough, who seem to have reached a perfect state of evolution and then stuck there for millions of years. Crocodiles are another example of a dinosaur that survived to the modern world. Modern crocodiles and alligators are smaller than their prehistoric cousins, but essentially the same animals. A crocodile from the Cretaceous period would have stretched to 49 ft (15 m)!

  Tyrannosaurus—49 ft (15 m) of ferocious predator. Note that we have no idea of the actual skin color.

  The World of the Dinosaurs

  The dinosaurs’ world was hot and tropical and dinosaurs of many shapes and sizes roamed prehistoric Earth. One of the most interesting things about studying dinosaurs is seeing how evolution took a different path before the slate was wiped clean in 65 million years BC. Carnivores developed into efficient killing machines, while their prey either grew faster, or more heavily armored, as the eras progressed—the original arms race, in fact. Huge herbivores could nibble leaves from treetops as tall as a five-story building. The largest were so immense that nothing dared attack a healthy adult, especially if they moved in herds. The herbivores must have eaten huge amounts of greenery each day to fill their massive bodies—with stones, perhaps, to grind up the food in their stomachs.

  As well as the giants, the age of dinosaurs overshadowed a smaller world of predators and prey. Compsognathus was only about the size of a modern house cat. We know it ate even smaller lizards as one has been found preserved in a Compsognathus stomach cavity.

  The fastest group of dinosaurs were probably the two-legged ornithomimids—the “ostrich mimics.” It is always difficult to guess at speed from a fossil record alone, but with longer legs than Compsognathus, they may have been able to run as quickly as a modern galloping horse. They have been found as far apart as North America and Mongolia.

  Compsognathus—meaning “pretty jaw.”

  Ornithomimids.

  Carnivores and Vegetarians

  During the Cretaceous period, gigantic meat-eaters such as Tyrannosaurus, Daspletosaurus and Tarbosaurus ruled the land. The Tyrannosaurus rex had up to sixty teeth that were as long as knives and just as sharp. Although the T-rex was a fierce hunter, its huge size may have prevented it from moving quickly. It is possible that it charged at and head-butted its prey to stun them, then used its short arms to grip its victims while it ate them alive—though behavior is difficult to judge from a fossil record alone. Much of the study of dinosaurs is based on supposition and guesswork—and until time travel becomes a reality, it always will be!

  The Velociraptor was made famous by the film Jurassic Park as a smaller version of Tyrannosaurus, hunting in packs. It may have used teamwork to single out and attack victims. Velociraptors were certainly well equipped to kill, with sharp claws, razor-sharp teeth and agile bodies.

  Our experience of evolution and the modern world suggests that carnivore hunters are more intelligent than herbivores. In the modern world, for example, cows need very little intelligence to survive, while wolves and leopards are capable of far more complex behavior. We apply the patterns we know to fill the gaps in the fossil record, but intelligence is one of those factors that are practically impossible to guess. If it were simply a matter of brain size, elephants would rule the land and whales would rule the sea.

  Velociraptor claw and toe bones.

  Armor

  One aspect of the age of dinosaurs that has practically vanished from ours is the use of armor for defense. It survives in tortoises, turtles and beetles, but otherwise, it has vanished as a suitable response to predators. By the end of the Mesozoic era, the arms race between predator and prey had produced some extraordinary examples of armoured herbivores. The Stegosaurus, meaning “covered” or “roof lizard,” is one of the best-known examples and evolved in the mid to late Jurassic period, some 170 million years ago.

  Stegosaurus was a huge plant eater about the length of a modern sixteen-wheel truck. The plates along its back would have made it much harder for a predator to damage a Stegosaurus spine. In addition, it had a viciously spiked tail to lash out at its enemies. Some dinosaurs, like the Ankylosaurus, even had their eyelids armor-plated.

  Stegosaurus

  Triceratops means “three-horned face” and was named by Othniel C. Marsh, an American fossil hunter. It looked armored for both attack and defense. It weighed up to ten tons and its neck protector was a sheet of solid bone—clearly designed to prevent a biting attack on that vulnerable area. It was very common 65 to 70 million years ago in the late Cretaceous period.

  The camouflage dinosaurs used is unknown. Skin just doesn’t survive the way bones do and, for all we know, some dinosaurs could have been feathered or even furred. Today’s animals leave some clues, however. Living relatives of dinosaurs such as birds and crocodiles show how some dinosaurs may have been colored. Large plant eaters like Iguanodon probably had green scaly skin and predators would have found them hard to spot among the forest ferns, very similar to today’s lizards. Some carnivores may have also had green or brown coloring, to help them sneak up on prey. Successful hunters like the Velociraptor may have evolved light sandy skin if they hunted in desert regions or brown savannah, just as leopards have done today.

  Like modern crocodiles, dinosaurs laid eggs. Some dinosaurs would look after these until they hatched, like the Maiasaur, which means “mother lizard.” The evidence for this comes from the first one found in Montana, in a preserved nest containing regurgitated vegetable matter—suggesting that the parents returned to feed their babies as modern birds do. In addition, the leg bones of the fossilized babies do not seem strong enough to support the infants after birth, suggesting a vulnerable period spent in the nest. In comparison, modern-day crocodiles leave the egg as a fully functioning smaller version of the parent, able to swim and hunt.

  In the skies of the Mesozoic, the reptile ancestors of birds ruled. There were many varieties, though most come under the species genus name of Pterodactylus—meaning “winged fingers.” Of all species on Earth, the link to birds from the Mesozoic era is most obviously visible, with scaled legs, hollow bones, wings and beaks. Many of them resembled modern bats, with the finger bones clearly visible in the wing. As might be expected, however, the Jurassic produced some enormous varieties. The biggest flying animal that ever lived may have weighed as much as a large human being. It was called Quetzalcoatlus—named after the feathered serpent god of Mexican legend. To support its weight it had a wingspan of 39 ft (12 m)—like that of a light aircraft. It was almost certainly a glider, as muscles to flap wings of that size for any length of time would have been too heavy to get airborne.

  There were no icebergs in Mesozoic seas. In the strict sense of the word, there were no dinosaurs either, as dinosaurs were land animals. However, prehistoric oceans brimmed with a variety of strange and wonderful reptiles, like the giant sea serpent Elasmosaurus. The neck alone grew up to 23 ft (7 m) long and today people believe that “Nessie,” the Loch Ness monster, is a surviving descendant of an Elasmosaurus or some other ples
iosaur, a similar breed.

  Elasmosaurus

  Extinction

  Hundreds of different dinosaurs roamed the earth seventy-five million years ago, yet ten million years later they had all but died out. Only the birds, their descendants, survived, and what happened is still uncertain. An enormous crater in the Gulf of Mexico was almost certainly caused by a giant asteroid hitting Earth. The impact occurred sixty-five million years ago, at the same time that the dinosaurs disappeared. Soil samples from the boundary between the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods—the moment of geological time known as the KT boundary—are found to be rich in iridium, an element commonly found in meteors and asteroids.

  The asteroid would have hit Earth at an incredible speed and dramatically changed the planet’s atmosphere. Huge clouds of rock and dust would have covered the sun, blocking out light and, crucially, warmth. Some animals lived through the changes; scorpions, turtles, birds and insects were just some of those resilient enough to survive. There is no definite explanation for why the dinosaurs vanished, although the asteroid strike is widely supported in the scientific community—at least for the moment.

  Making a Bow and Arrow

  AT SOME POINT, you may consider making a bow and arrow. Firing an arrow can be immensely satisfying—not to hit anything, even, but just to see it fly and then pace out the yards. The bow in this chapter sent a heavy-tipped arrow 45 yards (41 m), landing point first and sticking in.

  Despite the fact that English archers at the Battle of Crécy fired arrows three hundred yards (275 m), it was a glorious moment. The current world record is held by Harry Drake, an American, who fired an arrow in 1971, while lying on his back, to a distance of 2,028 yards (1854 m)—more than a mile.