Red Rover
цепи кованыеразрывные цепи
Two lines stand linked by the hands and call over a player from the other side, who runs and tries to break the chain.
Red rover tests the strength of one against the grip of two. The runner strikes not at a person but at the joint between two hands, and so the outcome turns not on the runner's weight but on how firmly the pair is holding.
Hence the only tactical decision in the game: whom to call. Either the weakest, to be sure of taking them, or the strongest, in the hope that the holds and they stay here.
Why the chains keep changing
Every run moves one person from team to team. The losing side is weakened twice over: it loses a player and hands them to the opposition.
That is why the game accelerates towards the end. The first decide almost nothing, the last decide everything.
The rules of red rover
Standing
The players divide into two teams and stand in two lines facing each other, ten or fifteen paces apart.
Each team joins hands firmly, forming a chain.
The call
The teams take turns to call: they name one player of the other side. The player named must run.
The run
The runner takes a run-up and strikes with their whole weight at the join between two hands of the far chain. Aiming at a person rather than at the join is not allowed.
The outcome
Break the chain, and they return to their own side taking with them one of the two players whose hands they parted.
Fail to break it, and they stay here and join this chain.
The call then passes to the other team.
The end
Play continues until one chain has absorbed the other entirely.
Worth knowing
Whom a successful runner takes away — either of the two whose hands they parted, or one of their own choosing — is decided differently in different companies. So is the end condition: some play until one chain is wholly absorbed, others stop when a side is down to two.
Glossary of terms
- Call
- A team's right to name one player of the other side, who must then run at their chain.
- Chain
- A line of players holding hands. The break is sought between two joined hands, not between two people.