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Irish Times
5 days ago
- Sport
- Irish Times
A mind-changer in the post-puke-football era: what it was like playing in the FRC's sandbox game
After an incredibly successful first year under the new rules, the Football Review Committee (FRC) headed back to the laboratory for further tests last Wednesday night. A 'sandbox' game was hosted between Dublin Senior 2 sides Fingallians and Round Towers Clondalkin in Abbotstown, to trial a few extra rules that hadn't made the cutline for the 2025 season. Heading out towards Blanchardstown though, there was a feeling that we, the players, were also on trial. Not only was the place, date and time of the match announced by FRC chairman Jim Gavin during the RTÉ broadcast of the All-Ireland final, but the chat in Towers' dressingroom was mostly around the bits and pieces posted on social media about the game, and whether a cadre of football nerds and journalists would descend upon the National Sports Campus. But the call was coming from inside the house. I was out there in both a professional and recreational capacity, having played for Towers since before I can remember, and certainly before I became a 'journo'. In any case, it turned out that there was a smattering of apparent neutrals in the stands, but before we got out on to the pitch, we were visited by Towers' most famous son, Gavin himself. READ MORE The rules of the match were set out to us. We were to begin with a 15-minute period, where goals would be worth four points and we would be unable to bring the ball back into our own half once we had crossed the halfway mark. The pitchside hooter would bring an immediate stop to the first quarter (rather than the play being allowed continue), and there would also be some alteration to the current kick out mark – although it wasn't clear to most of us what that was exactly. Jim Galvin explaining experimental rules to Round Towers players. Photograph: Alan Betson In any case, that wasn't much of a concern when we saw the Fingallians team, who appeared mostly to be well over 6ft tall. By the end of the first quarter, we were grateful that the hooter brought the game to an abrupt halt. A couple of four-point goals had hit the back of our net and we had already dug ourselves into a hole in this particular sandbox. Before the second quarter, Gavin came over to have a few words with us, and told us that it would begin with the scenario that we were six points up. Despite an improvement in the second period, we still conceded a four-pointer, which meant that we had lost the period by five. There were a few wry smiles when Jim came back to us at half-time with a cheery 'well done, you won that by a point'. The boosted goals had been very telling in the first half, as Fingallians went direct as often as they could. However, the game had also become unbalanced very quickly because of them. There was a couple of breaches of the halfway-line rule and both teams were able to press up farther because their opponents couldn't just turn and play it backwards. After the match, there was broad agreement that it was the most viable and positive of the sandboxed rules. After half-time came two evenly matched five-minute periods, where each side took a turn at playing a scenario where they were two points up to start. Then, for the final 20 minutes, another rule was introduced: a player receiving a hand pass would have to kick pass. In other words a team could not play two hand passes in a row. This led to more chaos, more verticality and more turnovers, and it was probably the most enjoyable part to play in. Round Towers players discuss adapting to experimental rules against Fingalians. Photograph: Alan Betson There were a few lapses on the rules throughout the game – lads passing into their own half, or playing one-twos through the hands in the final period. There were also some unusual decisions being made because of the different parameters, with more long balls being played, especially in the last 20. Having apparently become overwhelmed by the spirit of the game, I latched on to a loose pass and drove out of defence only to absolutely welly an awful pass into the full-forward line. I later managed to somewhat balance the books, cutting across the ball nicely to switch play after receiving a hand pass. It wasn't a defence splitter, but it did give pace to the attack on the far side, and it's exactly the sort of risky pass I would never play under the current rules. The increase in kicking in the final period had opened the game up, even if the rule itself wasn't perfect. When players did kick, they usually had the skills to execute their pass. But it was obvious that many of us simply don't get our heads up quickly enough, having been raised in the post-puke-football era. The FRC changes aren't just fixing a rules problem, they have to address the now ingrained safety-first culture in players. Those attitudes may actually prove harder to change than the rules.
Yahoo
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'A Minecraft Movie' made a beloved video game mainstream. YouTubers had already turned it into an empire.
ANAHEIM, Calif. — A Minecraft Movie is the biggest film of 2025 in the U.S. so far, topping the box office and making headlines for the popcorn-throwing anarchy unleashed upon theaters. But long before it was a cinematic phenomenon, Minecraft was a game beloved by its players — and the bedrock of a whole ecosystem of content creators. 'It's a sandbox game. It's kind of like Lego, so … you can build anything you want [and] you can do anything you want,' Dream, a 25-year-old from Florida who shares videos of himself playing Minecraft on YouTube for his 32 million subscribers, told Yahoo at the creator convention VidCon. 'I've gotten bored of different aspects of Minecraft since I've played for a long time, but there's so many different things you can do.' Now, like Dream, you can get famous on YouTube for creating content based within the video game. You can also get famous for creating content about the content that has been created in Minecraft. You can also get famous for creating content about the creators who make content in Minecraft. If you create a movie based on Minecraft and then reference the content that has been made inside Minecraft and the creators who produced it, you just might have a blockbuster on your hands. To say Minecraft wasn't mainstream before the movie is a stretch — just look at Dream or any of his friends who have millions of subscribers of their own. It's the bestselling video game of all time, and as of 2025, it has nearly 170 million monthly active players. The crux of the game is pretty easy to understand. As Dream explained, it's basically virtual Legos. Players must 'mine' for materials known as 'blocks' to build tools and structures. Depending on what mode you choose, you might have to defend those structures from villainous creatures like 'creepers' or 'skeletons' or other players. To 'win,' you have to kill the 'Ender Dragon.' Players can add 'mods' to tweak how the game is played in every possible way. You can make yourself more powerful, add more weird creatures to the game or introduce entirely new worlds. Because there are so many possible ways to play, tons of creators are able to coexist, entertaining the masses without seeming stale. Speedrunning, or trying to win the game as quickly as possible, is popular. Some of Dream's most recent videos include 'Minecraft Speedrunner VS $100,000 Bounty Hunter' and 'I Coded My Friend Into Minecraft ... (to speedrun).' He easily surpasses 1 million views with every upload onto YouTube. Creators like Dream go viral, collaborate with other players, create complex role-playing storylines in the game and form inside jokes that are then adopted by the community. A prime example is the 'chicken jockey,' which is a glitch in the game that causes a zombie to appear on top of a chicken. The mere mention of the concept in A Minecraft Movie inspired so much enthusiasm in theaters, people would scream and throw popcorn, wreaking havoc in public. Fans were really excited to feel seen, especially in mainstream entertainment, which often overlooks the nuances of internet culture. The joke song 'Steve's Lava Chicken,' which is inspired by concepts introduced in the game and performed by Jack Black in A Minecraft Movie, is the shortest song ever to hit the Billboard Hot 100 at just 34 seconds. Two months later, it's still No. 1 on the Top Movie Songs chart. YouTuber CG5 performed a cover of the song onstage at VidCon's Hall of Fame event to raucous applause. The myriad ways to engage with Minecraft have long been confined to the internet. With the success of the movie and its breakout song, it has officially infiltrated traditional entertainment. Given how well movies with familiar intellectual property like video games and comic books tend to do at the box office, it's kind of shocking that a Minecraft movie didn't hit theaters until 2025. But it has been in development since 2014, shifting directors, producers and story drafts multiple times. It's possible that Hollywood — or at least the suits at Warner Bros. — knew that the movie would have to strike the perfect chord between fan service and a coherent package that could be understood by curious moviegoers and parents alike. They landed on director Jared Hess, best known for absurd comedies like Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre. To Dream, that was the ideal choice. 'I think they did a great job. It seemed like they sought out to be a cringey-funny movie, and … it was cringey and it was funny. I enjoyed myself when I was at the theater,' Dream said. 'A lot of people watched it, so I think as many eyes on Minecraft as possible is always good. I love seeing Minecraft have a resurgence or have more people revisiting it.' As the game's most popular creator, Dream knows a thing or two about its fan army. For much of his career, he was a 'faceless' YouTuber. He played the game while commentating on what was going on via voice-over and wore a smiley face mask to obscure his identity. He amassed millions of followers who have written fan fiction about him and sent police to his house, developing a parasocial relationship with him before he ever revealed his face. 'It seems like I was paranoid, but … when I did leave my house, I did literally go in my car under a blanket. I knew people had doxxed me and found out my address,' Dream said. 'There were drones outside my house … the windows in my house had curtains all over.' When he finally revealed his face, it was because he wanted to connect with people and hang out with his friends. It didn't go over great, and people teased him for his appearance, having built up a different mental picture of him on their own. He went from being anonymous with tens of millions of subscribers to being recognized everywhere he went. At VidCon, fans lined up down the hallway and around the corner to hear Dream's fireside chat, where he demonstrated a project he's been working on that allows people to upload 3D versions of themselves into Minecraft and physically play it. Dream isn't the only Minecraft YouTuber with a massive fanbase. There are tons of creators shaping the game's future with its players more than any Hollywood blockbuster. Aidan Weiss, a 23-year-old YouTuber from Nevada whose channel is called Skip the Tutorial, has been making Minecraft content since he was 15. '[Minecraft] is a giant sandbox, so our videos are meant to help you get used to doing anything that you want to be doing there. I particularly love getting to showcase what you can do with your friends, whether that's different ways to prank them … or different ways to have build hacks that you can go show off,' he told Yahoo Entertainment while at VidCon meeting fans. Weiss knew he wanted to be a YouTuber since he was about 5 years old and as he got older dabbled in video editing, offering to help other creators edit their content for free. He first went viral after making a video about a mod he created that turned every Minecraft block into the same white texture, making it difficult to play the game. He was in high school then, so he didn't think much about monetizing and turning the game into his career until another YouTuber told him he should. Since then he's gone viral countless times with videos like '25 Ways to Destroy Your Friendships in Minecraft' and '179 Incredible Minecraft Build Hacks.' Like Dream's, Aidan's career is inextricably linked to Minecraft, yet the blockbuster movie about it didn't really change his life at all. 'Everyone who's a fan already kind of knew about it … I mean, I hear people say 'chicken jockey' a lot more,' he laughed. It's nice that more people recognize the name and gist of the game now, but it's their world. We've just entered the portal.
