10. Dwile Flonking was an exciting mixture of beer and tomfoolery
Alcohol has the capacity to make even the silliest of games a hell of a lot of fun. This includes chucking beer-soaked rags at your friends, otherwise known as Dwile Flonking. The sport dates back to at least the 16th century, when it was depicted in the Flemish Master, Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s Children’s Games. ‘Dwile’ is, tellingly, thought to be from the Dutch word, dweil, meaning ‘cloth’. The Dwile Flonking we all know and love however was first played in 1966 in Norfolk: ‘no one can remember the score, although team members recalled feeling “pretty fragile” the following morning’.
The ludicrous game involves two teams of twelve players decked out in traditional folk costumes (perhaps suggesting an older origin). A team member, the flonker, is surrounded by eleven opponents (girters), who dance around them, and dips a broom handle with a rag attached to it into a barrel of beer, before spinning in the opposite direction. An accordion plays, and when it stops, the driveller must fling the dwile at the girters. Points are scored according to where on the body the dwile hits. A dwile that misses altogether means that the flonker must down a glass of beer.
Simple enough? According to the Friends of the Lewes Arms, a pub that is the Madison Square Garden of the Dwile Flonking world, ‘the rules of the game are impenetrable and the result is always contested’. Much like Cheese-Rolling, Dwile Flonking is still played today under the considerable scrutiny of health and safety spoilsports. The 2010 World Championships were actually abandoned after the local council decided that the necessity of inebriation contravened initiatives to curtail excessive drinking. Still, if any sport were suitable for going underground, surely the ancient rural pastime of Dwile Flonking would be the best candidate.