a.k.a. British Bulldog

A playground game that was banned in almost every school I attended. It's violent enough to result in broken arms and dislocated shoulders on a regular basis.

The players split into two teams of equal size, and line up facing each other across the playground, holding hands or linking elbows.

One team starts by picking out someone from the other team, and calling their name, "Red Rover, Red Rover, send (wotsisface) over!"

Wotsisface then has to let go of his team mates, and run across towards the line of the other team, with the aim of breaking through. If he manages to break the line, and force his way through, he gets to choose one of the enemy team and take them back to join his home team. If he fails to break through the line, he has to join the enemy, and link up with them.

The game finishes when one team has all the players. The handy thing about this is that everyone ends up on the winning team.
This really is one of my favorite games to play outside, especially on a beach, with girls, at night, and lots of people.
Some stratedgies for ensuring all goes well:

Pick two captains and have them alternate picking teammates, this helps the teams to be as fair as possible.
Alternate strong link - weak link - strong - weak - etc for the best defense.
When you run to the other side always, always, always run in between the weakest link- darting off and "surprising" another link never surprises them and really only causes you to lose momentum.
When on defense it's always better to give and fall back than to stand your ground.
Along with the above stratedgy others on your team should be prepared to fall back too to keep the two attacked from being strained on both sides.

Also if you're running low on people it's easiest to omit the person picking someone to take back with them rule.

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