[HPforGrownups] Re: The trouble with Quidditch

[Janette]

No: HPFGUIDX 168898

>
> Bart:
> Having posted a couple of LONG posts today, I'm trying to keep the rest of
> my posting down, but there is nothing in canon to imply that the school has
> an easier to catch snitch, that the game has been played for hundreds of
> years, so there will be more statistical anomolies than if the game was
> relatively recent (such as games lasting for weeks).


montims:
and not wanting to flog a dead horse, but I believe Quidditch Through The
Ages IS canon, isn't it?  That is the history of Quidditch, which originated
in the 1000s, and cribbing shamelessly from Lexicon (
http://www.hp-lexicon.org/quidditch/quidditch.html) -

*Scoring:*
On the face of it, Quidditch scoring is unfair. In fact, it's so unfair that
you can barely call it a sport. Since catching the Snitch gains one side the
equivalent of fifteen goals and ends the game so the other team can't
counter it, Quidditch is essentially a match between the two Seekers and
nothing else. So what makes it so popular? Do witches and wizards just watch
it for the violence and fancy broom tricks?

Not at all. Quidditch is always played in a series. Unless you're playing a
pickup game in the apple orchard, every Quidditch match is part of a larger
series of matches, and accumulated points are what count toward ultimate
victory. The Quidditch Cup at Hogwarts goes to the team with the most total
points, not the one who has won the most matches. The standings we see in
the *Daily Prophet* for the British League
(DP<http://www.hp-lexicon.org/about/sources/source_dp.html>)
list the teams in order of how many points they have in total, from Tutshill
with 750 down to the lowly Cannons with only 230. Nowhere in the standings
does it note how many matches each team won. Although we don't see evidence
of it, there must be a similar system for the World Cup, which would imply
that Bulgaria and Ireland were the top scorers in the world that year. Would
it have been possible, then, for Bulgaria to have won the World Cup with
Krum's capture of the Snitch, even though Ireland won the match? Apparently
so.

As for games lasting weeks, I don't have the book to hand right now, but
good old lexicon again says that in 1884, a Golden Snitch is said to have
escaped capture for six months during a game on Bodmin Moor; the game was
called and the Snitch is now said to be living wild on the moor, and I'm
sure there are other mentions of games going on for days or weeks until the
snitch is caught.  I'm sure someone else can confirm or deny this...


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