The latest iteration of the laws of association football is 26,868 words long. Despite having to deal with variations for sevens and 10s, rugby union manages to deal with its laws in 22,480. Including field and equipment specifications, hockey sticks to 11,408 words. The latest playing rules of the Darts Regulation Authority amount to barely a third of that, treble-topping out at 4,275 words. The part of the International Weightlifting Federation’s rules that actually concerns lifting weights weighs in at a mere 1,325 words, clean and with minimal evidence of jerks. And so on, all the way down to the World Rock Paper Scissors Association, which requires only 62 words to explain the finer points of its game, those involved having perhaps learned from bitter experience the potential ramifications of overusing paper.
Every sport has its nuances, it’s just that some have more than others. Cricket, a sport in which a single game can last five entire days, has a bit extra to cover, and, as updated last September, its regulations finally run out after 34,602 words. Add the preface and indices and the entire document hits 37,827. Used wisely, these are enough words to create an entire world – CS Lewis needed just 594 more for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. It is almost exactly half as long as Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (but 52 times the length of the conversation between Potter and Oliver Wood which establishes the rules of quidditch), and represents 42% of The Handmaid’s Tale. Like those novels, it attempts to conjure its own, fully-realised alternate reality. But unlike them, no editor intervened when the authors’ imagination ran a little out of control.
