Hallaton Bottle Kicking 2nd April 2018

This is ridiculous. I’m a middle-aged man in glasses crawling through a hawthorn hedge with barbed wire both sides, in a very muddy field near Hallaton. I’m trying to keep up with an epic, rampaging Hallaton Bottle Kicking game which had everything - the longest end anyone could remember, the shortest one ever and a woman getting stuck in with an umbrella. The ancient, traditional event - roughhouse, 50-a-side rugby without rules - takes place in Harborough fields every Easter Monday, between the competing villages of Hallaton and Medbourne. This year Hallaton won 2-0, but the scoreline is much simpler than the story of the match. The game started us usual, just after 3pm on the crest of a hill near Hallaton, after a day of events including a church service, the traditional distribution of hare pie and the Bottle Kicking parade. There was also a minute’s silence for three Bottle Kicking stalwarts who have died in the last year - Peter Daisley, Bob Collier and David (Wacka) Wainwright. But niceties were forgot