Llargues - Rules

Rules

Two teams formed by 4 or 5 players try to attain a certain score (usually 10 points) by throwing each oher a ball with the hand so that the opposing team is not able to send it back. Not so much ago there was another scoring system called "up and down" (a pujar i baixar), where the team who was losing subtracted points to the winner.

Teams wear in red and blue t-shirts, being red the colour of the team allegedly stronger or favourite in the bets.

Players receive a name depending on their position on the street:

  • The banca is in charge of beginning every quinze by serving, from one side of the street.
  • The rest, from the other side of the street, is who usually replies the banca. Both players are the stronger pilotaris.
  • The mitger is in the middle of his midfield, his purpose is sending the ball as far as possible.
  • The punter is in front of the opposing team or into their midfield, he must block the ball or throw it to the non protected places.

Every point consists in four quinzes: 15, 30, val, and joc. The team who wins the joc scores a point.

The quinze begins when the banca serves: From the other side of the banca line the player must send himself the ball and (without any bounce) hit it to throw it so that it surpasses the fault line without touching the ground, then the opposing team may hit it back or block it so that it doesn't advance anymore.

In Llargues the ball must be hit with the hand when it's on the air or after its first rebound on the ground, to send it to the opposing team's field or behind the line that marks the end of the street. When the player blocks the ball he may touch it with any part of his body (but only after the second bounce), in that case a line is done on the ground (actually, a signal is placed on the sidewalk).

The main feature of Llargues are the ratlles (Valencian for lines), the signals set in the place where the ball has been blocked every quinze. The ball may be blocked because it's been thrown to the spectators and hasn't come back to the playing area, or, more likely, because a player has chosen to stop its advance when he realized he can't hit it back properly. In case the ball gets blocked on any roof or balcony the quinze is lost for whoever sent it there.

When a team has got 2 ratlles teams change the fields they'll try to score those pending points. Also, if the banca team gets a val they must change the field, even if they have only one ratlla.

When serving, they try to get direct quinzes or win the pending ratlles. Those ratlles are now the fault line. This way, the farer they've got the ratlla the more places has to defend the opponent and the more non protected areas there will be.

Direct quinzes are scored when:

  • If a team send the ball behind the opponent's street end line.

Or because a fault of the opponent:

  • If the ball bounces twice.
  • If a player touches the ball twice, or a player of the same team touches it after one hit.
  • If the banca player doesn't reach the fault line.

Read more about this topic:  Llargues

Famous quotes containing the word rules:

    “However patriarchal the world, at home the child knows that his mother is the source of all power. The hand that rocks the cradle rules his world. . . . The son never forgets that he owes his life to his mother, not just the creation of it but the maintenance of it, and that he owes her a debt he cannot conceivably repay, but which she may call in at any time.”
    —Frank Pittman (20th century)

    “When I hear the hypercritical quarreling about grammar and style, the position of the particles, etc., etc., stretching or contracting every speaker to certain rules of theirs ... I see that they forget that the first requisite and rule is that expression shall be vital and natural, as much as the voice of a brute or an interjection: first of all, mother tongue; and last of all, artificial or father tongue. Essentially your truest poetic sentence is as free and lawless as a lamb’s bleat.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “Under the rules of a society that cannot distinguish between profit and profiteering, between money defined as necessity and money defined as luxury, murder is occasionally obligatory and always permissible.”
    —Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)