Quidditch

Cultural Impact

If you pay close attention, Quidditch reveals a ton about the culture of the magical population, very little of it good. Interestingly I have not read all that many fan fiction stories that pick up on much of this.

Whether it is [Quidditch Through the Ages], or the indexed website articles at [The J.K. Rowling Index], there is no doubt that Quidditch is an incredibly violent sport.¹ We read about fans, including children, rioting over changes, be it standardising on goal hoops (a disappointment to pyromaniacs),² or establishing penalties for violence.³ In both cases, quotes are provided in which fans claim that the violence is a key part of the sport. Nor is this limited to history, [Ginny][] writes in the one article at length about the life threatening problems that the national teams' mascots caused in the 2014 World Cup.⁴ Even at the school level, Quidditch has caused injury - Oliver Wood references "a couple of broken jaws".⁵

[Ginny]: </Harrypedia/people/Weasley/Ginevra Molly/>/ [Quidditch Through the Ages]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/111450.Quidditch_Through_the_Ages [The J.K. Rowling Index]: https://www.rowlingindex.org/

Overall, I am reminded of the popularity of the gladiatorial games in the Roman Empire. We see the remains of the fervour that these "entertainments" incited in different ways in both action movies and reality TV. While I like to think that I enjoy action movies only because I know that they are not real, and that I would have the moral fibre to resist such temptation were people actually hurt, history tells us that many either did not or could not.

Game Play

Mrs. Rowling has written very little overall about how Quidditch is actually played. We know of a few "chaser formations" and have the description of a handful of the numerous possible fouls. We know how the game is scored, but not how it is usually won.

In soccer a free kick is very hard on the goalie,⁶ and similarly, basketball players average about 70 to 75 percent of their free throws.⁷ How hard is the penalty shot a chaser makes? Is it similar odds? Or does the keeper have an advantage?

What role does the team captain play? We have examples of a captain in each of the available positions, Wood as keeper, Angelina as chaser, [Harry][] as seeker, and Harpies captain Gwenog Jones as beater. Are there advantages or disadvantages to the captain being one or more of these? Does the answer depend in any way on the team's playing style?

[Harry]: </Harrypedia/people/Potter/Harry James/>/

Many authors have attempted to do something with this, sometimes by radically changing the game.⁸ Few have come up with compelling explanations within the rules, but the following is probably the best.

There are two basic strategies of being a seeker. First there were those rare individuals who could successfully shut out every aspect of the game. For those few who could, the quaffle, chasers and keepers were of no importance and ceased to exist within their consciousness. If the seeker was focused enough, the distraction made by the bludger could also be shut out.

This strategy left the seeker vulnerable to occasionally being hit by a bludger, but more often than not, these seekers won that game – especially if their team's beaters focused on protecting their seeker and keeping the bludgers at bay.

…

The other common seeker strategy was to act as a utility player of sorts – keeping one eye open for the snitch, but focusing more on acting as the fourth chaser of sorts or acting as a human bludger to break up the opposing team's plays as often as possible. When one of this player's teammates saw the snitch, they would shout something in a prearranged code and the player would revert to being a seeker.

While on average, these seekers only caught a third of the snitches, their teams averaged seven incremental goals per game.⁹

Another problem is the broom speeds and the stadium size. While we do not know the stadium size, it is fair to say that you can see the players reasonably well. My guess is that Mrs. Rowling is mentally modelling the stadium on professional soccer pitches. These can be anywhere from 90 to 120 meters long.¹⁰ If the Firebolt brooms go from 0 to 150 in ten seconds,¹¹ then he will be all the way across the pitch before he reaches full speed. In fact, if I do my maths right, if Harry does achieve full speed, he will be going 13200 feet per minute, which means that staying in within the pitch at all would be essentially impossible.

One author tried to get around this by giving the snitch a 2 mile limit for school play, and 6 miles for professional play.¹² The problem with this solution is that either the snitch is going massively far outside the stadium, or else the players are barely visible across the Hogwarts pitch to the unaided eye, and aren't visible in professional games.¹³

Ultimately I think this comes down to Mrs. Rowling's statement that she is really bad at maths.¹⁴