Developing a sport

So, I just made a sport for my world called pill-ball. It's game commonly played by the races of Quara (who are all bug people of differing backgrounds) with the main goal of see who scores the most balls in the opposing team's hole. The holes in question being found in two opposing walls in the field.

The field is a bit big, big enough to host several tribes that come to see them play. For more self contained ones, it's on smaller playing field.

The team is about 5 to 7 players with 3 of them being flying units. The main aim of the flying units is to pass the ball to the players on the ground so they can toss the ball into the hole. If the flying unit tosses the ball to the enemy team's, that does not score a point.

Since the game is divided into 3 rounds that last 30 mins each. During this round, the team that scores the most wins . if they win 2 of the 3 rounds, they win as well.

Now with that being said, what is your thoughts and what tactics would arise in this game? (also, using magic is cheating)

Well, it's gonna depend how fast the flying players are compared to the ones on the ground and the speed at which the ball is passed around. If they're very fast, we're looking at different tactics vs if they're relatively slow.

The big difference I see between this and our normal ball games (e.g. Baseball, Soccer) is that the flying players can intercept the ball in midair. So they essentially have a 1-dimensional curve along which they can intercept the ball rather than a 0-dimensional point (the place where the ball reaches the ground). This is a big advantage that the players stuck on the ground don't have. Since the ground players are the only ones permitted to score, what I imagine happening is that the ground players would be the 'offense', staying near the opposing team's goal in order to be able to catch the ball and put it through the goal quickly without the opposing fliers intercepting it. The flying players would be the 'defense', staying near their own goal to intercept the ball if it gets too close. Having 5 vs 7 players per team might make a rather big difference, in the sense that with 5 players you can have at least one flier guarding against each of the opposing ground players, whereas with 7 players there can always be at least one opposing ground player left unguarded. If the game were ever played with 8 or more players per team, and the goals are at ground level, each team might choose to keep one ground player back near the goal as a last-ditch defense, since the goal is essentially a 0-dimensional point that the ball must pass through.

If you set restrictions on how many times flying players can pass to each other (1?), then you force the teams to use some real strategy to position their ground and flying players most effectively. Also, you need some sort of "offside" rule so that one flying player doesnt just simply hand the ball to a ground players who waits the entire game next to the other side's goal. What are the rules about touching members of the other team?

edited 30th Nov '17 9:47:41 AM by DeMarquis

the reason i'm asking this is because this might be a script for a mock episode for one of my series. since 3 of the main characters can at least fly ( the 4th one can just use their wings to jump but not truly fly and the 5th can't fly since he's a crustacean). what's going happen if apply this restriction have 3 against 5? someone suggested the limit for flying units be 3- i just suck at making up sports.