Physical and mental exercise are both good for you. This is no unfounded assertion. Medical evidence abounds that a sound mind in a sound body improves a person’s survival potential and their quality of life. A reassertion of this point of view is expressed in the slogan "Sport for all". One can hope, therefore, that there are fewer people who, when they feel like taking some exercise, lie down quietly until the feeling passes.

Sports and games also make you "feel good". They give a pleasurable sense of well being, particularly if one is to any degree competent at whatever activity is involved. How does one know one is competent? The very word itself explains: by competition. This is how I view the role of competition. The reason for competing is to demonstrate the relative competence of all participants. It is a means of exploring ways of general improvement by considering the merits, or otherwise, of the strategy, tactics, equipment, or technique of each of the performers.

During the late twentieth century, commentators have largely concentrated on competition winners. The reminder of the participants are sadly neglected . This concentration on winning has had stultifying side effects. Corruption aimed at predetermining the winners, and drug taking, aiming to win at the cost of subsequent health damage are two of the more obnoxious. Even the organisers tend to ossify. Many sports and games have become rule bound, hide bound, and hence moribund. They are often so standardised that strategy dominates. Athletes or games players have little room for individual tactics. The scope for evolution becomes increasingly limited.

Occasionally rules are modified, usually to make the events more profitable, more spectacular, or more convenient for the organisers, rather than making them more interesting for the participants. For example, in Soccer (Association Football), the Penalty Shootout has appeared. This eliminates drawn games, but what a lottery! The players are exhausted. If one is going to have such an arbitrary way to determine a result, the least one could do is to have it first, before the match, when the players are fresh. It would then be applied only if the full-time score were tied. This would discourage both teams from playing for a draw, each hoping for a fluke victory in the shootout.

This device had become considered necessary because at the highest levels of the game the players made little attempt to win matches, they merely tried not to lose them. A perfect defence was all. The original purpose of the game: to score goals, was ignored. In such competitions as the World Cup the number of low or no scoring draws escalated . One year, I recall, most of the later knock-out rounds were resolved by penalty shoot-outs, even the final!

There is a simpler answer to this growing problem: move the goal posts! Move them further apart, I mean. The distance, instead of being standard, could depend on the standard of players. The distance would be set, by experience, so that about 10 goals would be expected per game. If at half-time there had been insuffient goals, then they could be put further apart. Apart from significantly reducing the probability of draws, I suggest that this simple ruse would help to reduce Soccer hooliganism. I associate its development with frustrated spectators emerging from low-scoring matches with the adrenaline levels high, feeling somehow cheated by bad luck, or the referee. If your team has lost 5-4, I think you would be more exhausted and less frustrated than if it were 1-0.

The game of Rugby football is in a healthier state. There is Rugby Union, Rugby League, Aussie Rules, and even American Football, not to mention seven-a-sides, or touch rugby. All of these have differing rules and require different skills, aptitudes, stratagems, and tactics. I hope the new professionalism in Rugby Union will help this diversity and not, as in soccer, turn much of the world into spectators rather than participants. Even Rugby could improve its range of participants if there were weight limits introduced: teams for players weighing under some number of pounds. This would allow more players to continue with the game after their school years. Touch rugby too should be encouraged, more than it is now, to extend peoples’ playing lives into their fifties and sixties. Mixed gender games would also be practicable.

Then there is Lawn Tennis. Similar to the penalty shoot out is the tie-breaker game; but, why do ties have to be broken? Why not sometimes make a set the best of 12 games; then count 6-6 as a draw. Only the final set, if reached, would need to be played to a finish. Additionally, if one wished to create more service breaks, there is the long advocated idea of one-serve tennis. My point is that whatever the rules happen to be for a particular tournament, they should not necessarily be universal. Truth is universal, rules don’t have to be. I advocate high standards, not standardisation. Amongst alternatives, cultural evolution will produce the more spectacular, for professionals, the more pleasurable, for keen amateurs, or the more fun, for the occasional dabbler, if, but only if, a choice exists. The idea that for any activity there are "Official Rules", to be employed everywhere, will eventually lead to stagnation, if not extinction.

A few further examples, from other sports or games will demonstrate the huge scope there is. Consider middle-distance running. At present the 800-metre race is won by the person first past the winning post after two laps. There could be an equivalent race. The winner would be the first person to be twice in the lead when passing that same post. That would be a whole new ball-game! Such a race would last longer on average, although at most for n+1 laps, where "n" is the number of runners. If we said three times in the lead that would require yet other tactics. This race could last up to 2n+1 laps in theory. These races would be continually exciting to watch, lap by lap. They occur, or did, in cycling, why not in running too?

How about the High Jump? Let us take it from the top. At some events, starting very high, the bar could be lowered gradually. Participants could choose at what height to start jumping. The first persons to clear the bar at some height would become the finalists; if only one, the winner. The remaining order would be determined similarly. Currently competitors are expected to attempt records at the end of a gruelling competition when they are tired and tense. Why not occasionally when they are loosened up and fresh?

Now let us look at cricket. This is a game certainly in the doldrums. The limited-over one-day match was introduced to try to enliven the game by at least producing a result. Three-day matches have become encumbered with playing for bonus points. How do ordinary spectators know when to applaud a bonus point? It is often marked merely by the passage of time. Clock watching happens quite enough in the workplace.

There are other methods. One could devise a three-(or more)-day limited-over match. It could run on the principle that the first innings would be allowed up to one quarter of the total overs; the second innings allowed up to one third of the overs remaining after the first innings; the third innings up to one half of the overs remaining after the second innings; and the fourth and final innings all the remaining overs. Follow-on rules could still apply in some form, and there would, as now, be allowances for bad weather. The idea of "hanging on for a draw", however, would be out of the question.

Another improvement, which would widen the appeal of the game to more players, would be, in certain matches, to award penalties for the ball striking the batsman, other than on glove or pads. The umpires would be empowered to award a discretionary number of "leg-byes". This could be a negative number if the batsman deliberately allowed the ball to hit the body. In extreme cases, should a batsman, through no fault of his or her own, be struck by a negligent bowler and have to retire hurt, then that side would be allowed to forbid the batting of one of the offending side in the next innings, or to cancel a score from the previous innings if the final innings were in progress.

For indoor games there are also opportunities for diversity. Poker comes in a multitude of forms. Duplicate Contract Bridge is rigid by comparison. World wide there is only one book of official rules of Duplicate Contract Bridge. Consider some flexible options. Overtricks could be awarded only half trick value. This would restore Major Suits to their proper place. Four Hearts, bid and made, would score 420, non-vulnerable, whereas 3NT + 1, only 415. Part scores would become more challenging. Two Diamonds plus one would score 100, but Three Diamonds bid and made, 110.

Then there is who becomes declarer. If the person wining the contract were to become declarer, or be able to choose who would be declarer, it would change some bidding conventions. How about taking a leaf from Backgammon and allowing Bridge players to "double" their partner’s contract, but with the constraint of being on lead with the opponents becoming declarer and dummy? There is much that could be done differently at different events to allow the game to evolve.

For the game of "Go" too, the size of the board is sacrosanct. A choice of board size by one of the players would diversify the game. Compare Go with Bowls, for example. There players can play long or short jack shots. A fixed standardised distance would spoil the game.

The reader will have noticed two themes running through most of these proposals. Not only am I trying to expand the number of participants, but also to increase ad hoc tactical thinking by the actual participants at the time. Too much standardisation leads to superbly trained athletes, or experts, performing like automatons. In professional Baseball, for example, players are even told when to run between the bases by on-field coaches standing beside them.

To achieve "Sport for all", or at least for many more, I believe a more judicious and flexible mix of mind and muscle would create a better long-term future for most competitive activities. Participating in a satisfying sport or game is one of the best ways I know of developing respect for oneself, and for one’s fellows. Being discouraged, or inhibited, by rigid dogmatic standardisation, does little but develop ill feeling for others, lack of confidence in oneself, and disrespect for the faceless mandarins behind those universal "Books of Rules".

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