Football chess

As with so many of the chess sets in my collection, I saw this American Football set on eBay, for not very much at all. 

Now there is such a thing as 'football chess'! The aim of 'football chess' is not to capture the king, but to get a ball into the goal or over the goal line. The now out-of-print Encyclopedia of Chess Variants actually lists five different versions, one of which uses a standard 8 x 8 board with the standard line-up of pieces. The difference with FIDE chess is just that there is a ball, which must be 'kicked' over the goal line, and each piece 'kicks' the ball the same way it moves. 

So I decided to just add a small ball to this set to turn it into (American) football chess. 

Board is the usual fold-out cardboard, depicting an American football field with two end zones. The 'Rivalry' refers to the Super Bowl where the champions of the National Football Conference and the American Football Conference play against each other. Hence the 'A' and 'N' in the two end zones.

The pieces, made of plastoy, show players with various roles (e.g. the queens are the quarterbacks). Each of the 32 pieces has a different helmet, representing the 32 teams in the League. 

It wasn't so easy to find a miniature American football! Eventually, I found a small acorn of pretty much the right size and shape, and used a permanent marker to make it look more like a real (American) football.