THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Roller Netted Ball is, as the name goes, a game where a ball has to be netted into a square goalpost. The roller part of it is because the players are on roller skates.
Currently, to select players for the national meets, the capital city is hosting the 2nd All Kerala State Schools Roller Netted Ball Championship 2023-2024 for three days from January 12 to 14. About 400 students from various schools in the state are participating in it under mini, junior and sub-junior categories.
The difference from the other games of the genre is in goalpost, which has three holes. The biggest one can win the player one goal and is called the bronze goal, the smaller one can fetch three goals (called silver goal) and the last and the smallest can fetch the player five goals in one go and hence termed golden. The game is nail-biting to the finish as it can change anytime, says K Sivarajan, secretary of the Roller Netted Ball Association of Kerala. He claims the sport is native to the capital city and was put together here.
Banking on the popularity of roller skating in Thiruvananthapuram, Sivarajan came up with the idea of a novel sport that uses roller skating expertise of the player and clubs it with the ability to handle the ball.
“I was frustrated at the indifference meted out to sportsmen from Kerala in national meets. There was a need for our own sport where we would get the chance to be fair and just,” says Sivarajan, who was the State Roll Ball Association secretary and a roller skating coach in several schools in and outside the state.
According to him, the game was introduced in 2015 after six years of trial and error. The global association for the sport has been registered in Thiruvananthapuram.
“The game has been played at national and international levels,” Sivarajan says. “The second international meet is going to be held in Sri Lanka in May. The national school level will be in Pune. It is being played in most states in the country.”