Underwater sports

The only officials on this site who are equipped better than the athletes.

Referees work in the water, on scuba, moving with play. A surface official cannot see a game played on the floor of a pool, and in underwater rugby cannot see most of the field at all — so the sport put its officials into the volume, carrying the breathing apparatus the competitors are forbidden.

Even that does not give full coverage. Underwater rugby is contested through a three-dimensional space with bodies obscuring each other in every plane, and multiple in-water referees plus surface officials are used to close the gaps. It is the hardest sport covered here to see completely while it is happening.

The calls themselves divide into two kinds:

Ordinary fouls. Attacking a player who does not have the ball, obstruction, illegal use of the stick in hockey, holding without contesting.

Air offences. Anything that stops an opponent reaching the surface — holding them down, pulling them back, interfering with mask or snorkel. These are treated with a severity that has no equivalent in another sport's foul list, because the consequence is not a disadvantage but a drowning risk.

A distinctive practical problem: an official cannot blow a whistle intelligibly under water, so play is stopped with signals and with acoustic devices, and communication between in-water and surface officials is part of the competition's design rather than an afterthought.

Two sports, two overlapping maps, both drawn by diving-club culture and by the availability of pools.

Underwater hockey is strongest in the countries whose sub-aqua club traditions produced it and adopted it early: Great Britain, where it was invented, and above all New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, France, Colombia, Turkey and Canada. New Zealand and Australia have been dominant for long stretches, which for a sport invented in Portsmouth is a reversal worth noting.

Underwater rugby is a northern European sport almost exclusively. Germany, where it was invented, and Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Colombia are the powers — Colombia again being the outlier, as it is in ultimate, finswimming and roller speed skating, and for the same reason: a small, concentrated national programme in a sport nobody else is funding heavily.

The constraint on both is pools, and on underwater rugby it is severe. The sport needs at least three and a half metres of depth, and municipal pool construction has trended shallower for decades — cheaper to build, cheaper to heat, better suited to swimming lessons. A country's underwater rugby scene depends on how many deep pools it happens to have inherited.

That is an unusual kind of geographic determinism. Most sports on this site spread where somebody invested or where a diaspora carried them. This one spreads where the twentieth century happened to leave deep water indoors.

Both of these sports were invented by diving clubs to solve the same problem: what do divers do in winter?

Underwater hockey was devised at the Southsea Sub-Aqua Club in England in 1954, credited to Alan Blake, and originally called octopush. The club wanted something that would keep members diving and fit through the cold months, in a swimming pool, and built a game around what a pool offers: a flat bottom, and divers who can hold their breath.

The consequences were immediate and are still the sport's structure. Six a side, short sticks, a lead puck heavy enough to stay on the floor — and no goalkeeper, because nobody can remain stationary at depth long enough to be one. A sport whose defenders must all keep surfacing cannot have a fixed last line, so it does not have one.

Underwater rugby was devised in Germany in 1961, out of the same club culture and a more radical idea. Rather than adapt a surface game downwards, it was built around the physical properties of a deep pool. The ball is filled with saltwater so that it sinks. The goals are heavy baskets on the bottom. The pool is three and a half to five metres deep, and all of it is in play.

That last decision made it the only team sport contested in three dimensions. Everything else on this site is played on a surface, whether that surface is grass, ice, a court, a mat or water. Underwater rugby is played in a volume.

CMAS, the world underwater federation founded in 1959, took both on, and established world championships in 1980.

Very little kit, and two objects designed around a single physical property: they must not float.

The puck in underwater hockey is lead, around 1.3 kilograms, usually sheathed in plastic. Weight is the point — it keeps the puck on the pool floor where the game is played, and gives it enough inertia to be flicked accurately by a short stick. A light puck would drift and rise, and the sport would not exist.

The ball in underwater rugby is filled with saltwater, which makes it denser than the pool water around it so that it sinks at a controlled rate. This is the most elegant equipment decision on this site: the negative buoyancy is what keeps play at depth. A ball that floated would drag every contest to the surface and turn a three-dimensional game into a two-dimensional one.

The stick in hockey is about thirty centimetres, held in one hand, with a protective glove on that hand. It is a pusher rather than a striker, and the sport's signature skill is the flick — moving a lead puck accurately with a short lever, from an inverted position, without air.

Everything else is diving equipment: mask, snorkel, fins, mouthguard and ear protection. No player carries a breathing apparatus of any kind.

The referees do. Officials work in the water on scuba, which makes them the only officials covered on this site who need more equipment than the athletes, and the only ones who can stay in the field of play longer than the competitors can.

These sports sit inside a federation whose main business is not sport, and their difficulty is one this site has met before in a more extreme form.

CMAS governs underwater activity broadly — diving standards, technical and scientific work, and a set of competitive disciplines of which the two team sports are only part. Finswimming, freediving, underwater orienteering, underwater photography and competitive spearfishing all sit under the same body, and they have almost nothing in common with each other.

That breadth means the team sports compete for attention inside their own federation before they compete for it outside.

The visibility problem is the binding one. Underwater hockey and underwater rugby are, by the account of anyone who plays them, tactically rich and physically demanding, and a spectator at the side of a pool sees splashing. Underwater cameras and live streaming have improved this and cannot solve it, because a pool is not built for filming and the audience needs to understand a game they have never seen played.

There is also a facility politics. Underwater rugby needs a pool at least three and a half metres deep, and modern municipal pools are increasingly built shallow. A sport whose venue requirement is being designed out of new construction has a growth problem that no federation can legislate away.

Competitive spearfishing is the discipline that draws external objection. It is governed by the same federation, it is restricted or banned in a number of countries on conservation grounds, and it sits awkwardly beside an organisation whose other work includes marine environmental programmes.

Getting to the air. The safety rule that defines both sports: nothing may prevent an opponent surfacing to breathe. Holding a player down, interfering with a mask or snorkel, or blocking a route to the surface are the gravest offences in the rulebook, and they exist because the ordinary business of these games — wrestling for a ball at depth — is one bad decision away from drowning somebody.

Contact in underwater rugby. The sport permits wrestling the ball carrier, which in water is much gentler than on land and can still trap a person at depth. The boundary between legitimate contest and dangerous restraint has been rewritten repeatedly and is the sport's central officiating judgement.

Officiating what nobody can see. Referees are in the water, on scuba, and in underwater rugby they still cannot see the whole volume. The number of officials, their positioning and the use of surface officials have all been adjusted to close gaps in coverage.

Pool depth. Underwater rugby specifies a depth range, and the volume of the playing area varies within it. That makes venue selection a competitive variable, and it is why the sport is careful about championship pools.

Spearfishing. Not a rule change inside the team sports, and the federation's most contested activity. Competitive spearfishing is restricted or prohibited in several countries on conservation grounds, and whether it belongs under the same body as marine environmental work is argued from outside the sport.

Recorded as unsettled.

Whether anyone can watch. The sports' central problem, and harder than the equivalent for orienteering or air sports because there is no moment when the action comes to the spectator. Underwater cameras and streaming help and do not solve it, and no rule change reaches it.

Deep pools. Underwater rugby needs at least three and a half metres and new pools are built shallower. The sport's growth is limited by decisions made by municipal planners for reasons that have nothing to do with it.

Contact and air. The line between contesting a ball at depth and preventing an opponent surfacing is the sport's most consequential judgement, rewritten repeatedly, and it will keep being rewritten because the underlying tension is permanent.

Officiating coverage. Referees on scuba still cannot see a whole volume. More officials, better positioning and surface support are the answers so far, and none is complete.

Spearfishing under the same federation. Competitive spearfishing is restricted or banned in several countries on conservation grounds and is governed by the same body that runs marine environmental programmes. The objection comes from outside the sport, and the federation has not resolved it.

Whether the team sports are a priority. They sit inside a federation whose larger business is diving standards and technical work, alongside finswimming, freediving, orienteering and photography. What share of a small organisation's attention two invisible team sports should get is a genuine internal question.