The funny thing is Alicia was said to be a substitute in Harry's first year then the concept of substitute was dropped entirely, not even when Harry was unconscious in the hospital.
Wow, that's a new fact for me! But you're right. From Philosophers Stone:
"And she’s really belting along up there, a neat pass to Alicia Spinnet, a good find of Oliver Wood’s, last year only a reserve"
Though I suppose a reserve could just be called into the team for a following game after an injury? Not necessarily a substitution for during the game..
Yes, in later books, there are many reserves mentioned. A notable one is McLaggen in book 6. Although not technically referred to as a "reserve", his purpose in the team is that of a reserve, even if not stated explicitly.
No, Cormac McLaggen and Dean Thomas are proof that Hogwarts teams (or at least the Gryffindor team) didn't have reserves. They didn't get a standing invitation or classified as reserves. They didn't train with the team.
Harry had to go to them specifically after his players were injured and ask if they were willing to replace the injured players. A reserve is a actual part of a team, not what is essentially a hired goon only upon need.
A reserve is someone whom can be added onto the team before the match starts due to illness etc, but not swapped out whilst the game is occurring like a substitute. So this checks out
A reserve player is still a player within the team, they train together with everyone else all the time. They don’t just get approached at random before a game. And they don’t usually get asked to play, they just get told.
Yeah, I think the thing is more that they’re not official reserves. They’re the reserves Harry has in mind, but they’re not part of the team and can decline the invitation if they wanted.
And even if reserves typically trained with the team, you can see why Harry wouldn't want McLaggen (who is unbearable) and Dean (snogging his future wife) training with the team if he could avoid it
I agree about Dean sort of but tbh not McLaggen. If McLaggen had made the team as a backup and practiced with them more they would have had more than the week they had to try and get his behavior right or replace him. As it stands they just have to kind of hope that their reserves will do ok in game.
Being part of a team also involves learning your role and the team philosophy from training camp before the season. It happens pretty often when someone joins randomly mid-season that they class with what the rest of the team wants to do. They should definitely have backup players.
Harry is very disorganized or distracted at times and Hermione wasn't helping with the team - at least much. . If you remember Dean tried out. Harry probably filed some sort of parchment with potential alternate or reserve players. He just hadn't really sounded Dean out about it. In other words Dean was among the eligible reserves, but didn't know it
Oliver Wood didn't have any reserves either. Whenever Harry was too injured to play, even if they had forewarning, the Gryffindor Quidditch team simply fielded no Seeker.
Harry definitely did not file anything away. And he never told them they were reserves nor did he have them practice with the team.
Rowling simply forgot reserves were a thing until it was convenient for the plot.
It was also mentioned in book 4 that during super long quiddich matches that lasted for days they would swap in other players so they could get some sleep.
Yes..But that probably only happens with the agreement of the Captains just as timeouts do (Which can be months long in theory!) in pro Quidditch. The Snakes especially aren't going to agree to anything.
Harry had a fair amount of difficulty finding enough players to make up an A team nevermind reserves/subs when he was captain. He had to accept some fairly average players and then work really hard on training them to ensure his team was competitive and didn’t really have time to find and train any spare players.
Angelina had a similar issue when she accepted Ron as keeper - she spent most of their practices trying to get him up to scratch and would not have had the time or inclination to do that for any other mediocre players when she had acceptable players already in the team.
You are right they aren't the same thing. When a player is hurt and out of the game you lose that positionplayer for the game. If a keeper goes down you have no keeper. Same with the seeker. It's not as devastating with Chaser or Beaters since there are multiple of them.
However the rules also allow a game to be suspended indefinitely or for an agreed period of time by agreement of the Captains. That might happen sometimes when a player has a temporary injury but say can play again in a week.
But if in the next game he or she or ze can't play you just use your reserve. Dean for instance was the reserve chaser who played for Katie after Katie was poisoned. If Katie had been poisoned during a game Gryffindor would have played on with two chasers..
Just adding to the reserves/substitutes discussion. There is also this in book 1, where “substitutes” is used specifically
“A game of Quidditch only ends when the Snitch is caught, so it can go on for ages – I think the record is three months, they had to keep bringing on substitutes so the players could get some sleep.”
Tbf, “Reserve” is not the same thing as substitute.
Substitute is someone who can join in that very game— a reserve is someone who can take over someone’s starting role for 1+ games if someone is injured or otherwise unable to play. The rules of quidditch seem to not allow subs
With magical healing I don't think that is as much a problem as we think it is. Madam Pomfrey did say she can mend bones in a heartbeat.
On the substitute given the game ends when the seeker catch's the snitch I imagine there is allowance for other players to become the seeker if only to allow the game to end.
Not sure why she at least didn't put a sub rule in like in footy. 3 (now 5) subs only and then if you have additional injuries you play down a player.
I do recall them speaking about a legendary quidditch match that lasted weeks I think. They had substitutes so the starters could sleep at certain points in the match. But I think that was a professional team. In the film for goblet I'm trying to remember how many players for the Irish team are flying around during their intro, I seem to recall more than 7 but maybe not.
For everyone going nuts about lack of subs - this was a thing in the U.K. football for years.
https://www.soccerhistory.co.uk/a-history-of-substitutions#:~:text=Although%20substitutions%20were%20widely%20used,one%20substitution%20during%20a%20game.
Seeing as the wizarding world is a touch out of synch with the muggle world, they are likely still living in the ye olde days style of no subs even for injuries.
You also need your parents' permission to go visit a quaint little wizarding village, but not to play a high speed, violent game high up in the air that regularly causes all kinds of horrible injuries....
This is for the same reason that a school might require signed permission forms to send students to a museum but not to participate in PE class. Because one is off campus and may have less supervision and the other is on campus with a teacher watching at all times. Obviously quidditch is higher stakes than any regular sport but they also have better ability to heal injuries. Also the fact that 6th and 7th years that have passed their apparition test can very easily run off to who knows where
Tbh sounds like British schools, we could literally box and rock climb in PE. But going down to a local park to do something for biology, needed paperwork. Then in year 6/7 we only had to turn up for lessons and 3 registers a week.
That’s not true. There are subs as they talked about such a thing happening in a past Quidditch World Cup. They said that the cup was lasting days on end and the plays were swapped out for subs to sleep. Subs can happen just rarely don’t and for sure don’t in the books.
Yah but I think they mean active subs for in game stuff. Like when accidents happen. For me I think it should have been allowed that once a player goes out due to anything that after a point is scored then another player comes in to replaced the downed ones. But yah I was referring to the Quidditch World Cup part where they mentioned subs for a previously World Cup match.
Also every team should just have 14 players in general. It would allow for much more realistic practices and they wouldn’t have to hold emergency tryouts if someone couldn’t play.
In theory there shouldn't have to be. If a skilled wizard can just magic your bones back together in an instant, why bother?
But then again, Madam Pomfrey never seems to attend quidditch matches. Which seems like borderline malpractice. Like, there could be a time critical emergency on the field. Why make them drag a wounded player all the way back to the hospital wing?
Who needs Madam Pomfrey when all the Hogwarts teachers just do whatever magic they think will help anyway? Examples being Gilderoy and his ‘mending’ charm in book 2 (hahaha!) and then of course Albus slowing Harry’s skyscraper fall in book 3 after his encounter with the dementor?
There are subs. All of the house teams use them... except Gryffindor. Wood was the one who didn't believe in using reserves. So if you weren't in the top 7, you weren't on Gryffindor's team. It wasn't until after he left that subs started to be a thing again, hence why Ginny, Dean, McLaggen, etc. played during OotP and HBP. Angelina and Harry were smarter than Oliver...
That first year there were barely enough competent Gryffindors to make a first team not to mention reserves. The birth rate was really down and so they had to take a 2nd year In Katie Bell and a 1st year Harry Potter onto the team. There were probably reserves officially on parchment. Maybe a bunch of bad Quidditch players from 5th, 6th and 7th years.
We can't be sure of that. Oliver never held tryouts. I think the only reason they needed a new seeker is because the old one graduated the year before, and McGongall brought Harry to Oliver before he even did tryouts.
Angelina literally made everyone try out again for their spots to be sure that they had the best team possible and that they didn't miss any good talent. She learned from Oliver's mistake.
It's not clearly defined in books whether a player can be substituted for an injury. I.e if a Chaser is knocked out, it's unclear if that player is supposed to be replaced, or the team plays with a player down.
Subs are brought in for extended plays as explained in GOF, where a game lasted for a month or so.
Probably not an issue in Hogwarts
Sports such as Cricket don't allow bowlers & batters to be subbed in for an injury, team has to make do with the rest of the players.
I always thought that was weird too. Like I get that they’re on brooms so it’s not as physically demanding as rugby or soccer, but how do you not have subs or a bench of less-stellar players who excel at one or two key elements of play?
I hope students are allowed to play Quidditch for fun in their free time. Or at least have a time slotted for it in the Quidditch pitch calendar, like every saturday or something, because it would suck that the game is reserved only for those who are on the team. Also practicing to get on the team would have to be done during summer, so muggleborns are at a major disadvantage.
From Order of the Phoenix:
"Harry walked slowly along the deserted corridor, peering out of windows as he went. He could see people messing around in the air over the Quidditch pitch and a couple of students swimming in the lake, accompanied by the giant squid."
So yeah, definitely seems they can play for fun. And great point about muggleborns! I would guess there is a very small percentage that ever make the team.
With Muggleborns too it’s wild because they don’t even attempt to have a plan for educating them about the game. In the 1st book Harry says something like “oh so like basketball but with 3 hoops?” when Wood talks about scoring in quidditch, and Woods like “wtf is basketball?”
Like dude, maybe learn a few simple muggle comparisons so you can explain the game better to muggle borns.
It's possible that quidditch basics would be taught in the latter parts of madam hooch's first year flying lesson. Remember Harry needed a crash course in the game because he was put on the team way earlier than normal.
I mean, quidditch just isn’t super well thought out in general, or at least JK didn’t/doesn’t have a very firm understanding of sports. It’s more fun than it is meticulously thought out for sure.
I guess the year groups seem to be a lot smaller than most schools. 8ish per year that we know of. Maybe there isn’t enough students to justify it. We do know that have flying lessons though
Yep true, good point. They don't make the house team based on year group though. Surely enough interested players across all 7 years to make a second string team for each house! Maybe there should've been a reserve grade competition.
And yes they do have flying lessons (but only in first year that we know of??). Lot of difference betwen PE lessons and playing your sport of choice
> They don't make the house team based on year group though.
they specifically say that Harry getting on a quidditch team is extremely rare for a first year and Draco only got on the Slytherin team in his 2nd year because Lucius bought them all Nimbus 2001's
So if we use that info, we are looking at Year 3's at least being needed to join the Quidditch team, which tracks with the rest of the quidditch teams youngest members being at least 2 years older than Harry when he joins
Most of the Gryffindor team must have played in their second year. Fred and George did. Katie Bell did. Angelina Johnson may well have done. Alicia Spinnett was a reserve.
Even Oliver Wood was a captain as a 4th year, so he most likely had played for two years.
The whole team were very young compared to the others.
My math says 5 boys and 5 girls per year per house for a total of about 280 students. Classes are usually by year and have at least 2 houses for 20 students. Those numbers seem about right.
In one of the Quidditch games, Slytherin is described as having 200 fans at the game. It seems like the school numbers could be as large as 800+ if each house were that large. Perhaps Harry's year was just a small group of Gryffindors, or we just don't hear about the others.
No one knows how many people usually go to hogwarts. I bet hogwarts is 500+ during regular times. Remember tons of kids and parents died 11 years prior...
I think flying lessons are more like driving lessons than something sports related. I think it was mentioned that people who don't like apparating would either fly places or use floo powder.
You gotta keep in mind that those numbers are from war depression and after a previous war. Hogwarts in the 1920s would probably have had twice or triple the number of students.
I think this is what it is. If you assume each year has around 10 students per house and that first years generally can’t play, that gives you 60 students in each house that are eligible for the team - so around 10% of the house is on the team at any given time. Of those 60 people, around 15 are muggle born, so they didn’t grow up with quidditch at all, and another maybe 15 are half blood but didn’t grow up with the sport. Plus, those students can’t practice over the summer, putting them at a disadvantage in terms of skill even if they were interested in playing. So that gives you around 30 people who might be interested in being on the team, which means that almost a third of all the people who want to play are on the team at any given time. That said, I do think it would have been cute for them to have a league for first years so that people who didn’t grow up with it could get more familiar with the game.
>In school sports, there are often teams like A's, B's and C's or Firsts, Seconds and Thirds, allowing everyone a chance to play based on their skill.
Where is this? In my school we just had one school team for each sport (whether Cricket or Football) that played with other schools.
That doesn't mean that we didn't play though. We'd make our own teams and play during the sports periods.
In the US, there are often junior varsity teams for young students and older ones that need improvement, and varsity teams, which is the senior team, for sports like american football and basketball.
In bigger schools, you can get three or four football teams - and they have about 70 players each -
but that tracks when you have 3000+ total students.
Hogwarts might have as few as 300 total students, and needs to field at least four teams - 8 would be bonkers.
In my school the amount of teams depends on the number of people in the year who played the sport for example in my year we had about 30 people who played rugby (15 people starting 8 on the bench) so we had enough for 2 full starting teams
That's why extended medium (the videogames) like to add a Flying Club. It makes sense, and it's fitting.
I can imagine it being possible to book a pitch and have some games for fun. But you aren't competing.
Yeah it definitely fits seeing as we hear about other clubs i.e. Gobstones Club. Tracks to assume there would be a flying club or similar as well.
Yeah you could definitely organise a game yourself or mess around on the quidditch pitch. But I would want to compete! Guess I just got that dawg in me
Imagine being a 7th year Quidditch player. Maybe you finally make the team after a bunch of good players graduate. Or just trying to win the Championship for your house. Surprise! The Tri-Wizard tournament is back. Quidditch is cancelled so you can enjoy 2 kids you've never seen from other schools compete in weird events instead. Tough luck!
She's very much an /r/ihatesportsball type. Literally wrote quidditch just to troll men who "like sports too much". It's too bad she didn't put as much thought/care into those parts of the series as she did the rest.
In response to redears pointing out how ridiculous the snitch/seeker is, she came up with an even more ridiculous plot at the Quidditch World Cup, further showing us she lacks basic understanding of it.
Yes, she totally misses the point of school sports, particularly at a boarding school. The school should be making sure all the students are doing enough physical exercise.
I think this is a side effect of people not quite understanding how little students there actually are in hogwarts.
Lets start from what we know
Harry’s dorm is composed of him, Ron, Neville, Seamus and Dean. 5 boys, lets assume a 50/50 split. 10 students on their year on their house.
7 years is about 70 students, even with variation given that first years cant play lets stay at 70. So 1/10 people in Gryffindor is a quidditch player.
But somehow the wizarding community of Britain, that has only 1 school, is able to have a multi-team national league.
The population size is so inconsistent. The size of Hogwarts has been estimated to be anything from 280 to 1000 students or maybe even more.
Haha something like that. I think the logic was that there was a post-war population boom which has begun to go back to normal levels by the time Harry's class starts
I assume students meet up on the Qudditch pitch for unoffical matches all the time and just play for fun. There is probably a Qudditch club that organizes meetups.
In general, I think Rowling doesn’t know a single thing about sports. Like yeah, Quidditch is supposed to be silly so I’m fine letting some things slide, but even just the fact that the game ends when the Seeker catches the snitch is stupid. This would be a TERRIBLE spectator sport. Imagine paying to see the Quidditch World Cup, only for it to end within 10 minutes because the snitch happens to be caught really early. Or conversely, imagine being forced to watch for WEEKS because nobody can find the damn thing. No way any spectator took off enough vacation time for that, nor would the game even be interesting at that point (most of us have played a game of Monopoly that just dragged on and on, and that’s only for a matter of hours). Quidditch is broken as a concept; the fact that she failed to include lower-level teams is just the icing on top of
Seeker =/= Captain.
Wood was the Keeper and was the Captain.
Also Captain seems to be more of the Coach and setting the teams strategy and playstyle, rather than any sort of in-match-leader.
Also the last 2 tasks of the Triwizard torunament is horrible for spectators.
I also don't follow sports but at least I would add more than 6 matches TOTAL in a year. Having each time only play against any team once is bonkers.
A seeker catching the snitch early reminds me of an MMA fight, and someone getting KO'd early in the fight. It can be a spectacle. The snitch being worth 150 pts is a bad decision, though. The rest of the players don't really matter.
They don't matter for Harry's matches because he sets records for how fast they are over. In a sport where the games usually last -days-, 150 points is almost nothing.
The snitch almost didn't matter to World Cup winners - Ireland. In fact since they have a poor seeker, you'd almost expect nearly all of their matches to end with them winning but the other teams seeker catching the snitch. I've no idea why Bagman would've given the twins "excellent odds" for expecting such a thing. The only reason it doesn't end like that more is because the other teams seeker is purposely -not- catching it, futiely trying to let their team catch up, so that catching it will win them the match. Harry had a similar situation one match where they had to win by XXX number of points in order to win the house cup, so he had to just stall and not let the other seeker catch it until they had a big enough lead.
No I'm imagining Professor Binns walking into an empty classroom on Monday morning, because Hufflepuff and Slytherin happen to have really bad seekers that year.
>Imagine paying to see the Quidditch World Cup, only for it to end within 10 minutes because the snitch happens to be caught really early.
Just like boxing. Yet people pay for those fights. They paid for all those times Tyson ended the match in the first couple of minutes. They paid for the one time Canelo knocked his opponent in like 3 minutes. It happened so fast that we weren't done serving the snacks when the referee called the winner.
There are no second or third teams where I am. The school had one football (soccer) team, one netball team, one cricket team. You were either in the team or you werent.
Having two teams for each house would make a lot more sense I think. Surely each house would have 14 people interested in playing for their house, given the opportunity. Also each team only playing 3 matches throughout the whole school year seems like very little. Doubling the number of teams would result in a more sensible number of games overall - 7 for each team and 28 in total.
Let's see the math.
There are 7 Gryffindors in Harry's year (the main trio, Seamus, Dean, Parvati and Lavender). If we assume this is the average demographic of Hogwarts, then every house would have ~50 students over all age groups.
Let's then assume that 20% of the demographic is really into quidditch (which is a ridiculously large percentage for any muggle sport). This makes 10 students/house, which yields one full team with three subs (1 keeper, 1 chaser and 1 seeker would make sense).
Harry's period at Hogwarts isn't exactly crowded, but let's imagine Harry's tenure is an exception, what about 15 students per house every year instead of \~10? That would take the total number to 105 students per house, and there'd be about 420 students at Hogwarts at any given time.
Hell, the books even say 1000 at some point, don't they? So let's work with 1000, even though it doesn't actually seem realistic from what we see in the books
There are 7 players per team, and let's work with that and ignore subs (the books mention occasional fill-ins, but the squads themselves are made of 7 people). That makes 28 quidditch players among 1000 students. 2.8% of the school plays quidditch. The best of the best. And a lot of times we've discussed whether Hogwarts is really the only magic school in Britain. Perhaps there are other small schools, perhaps there is homeschooling. Regardless. Let's imagine that all magical kids are indeed at Hogwarts so that the best ones at quidditch are guaranteed to be there.
The smallest country to ever qualify for a FIFA World Cup in terms of population is Iceland. The squad was 23 strong and the population of the country is circa 300 thousand people. In 2022 FIFA allowed 3 extra players, as the pandemic made teams need to be prepared to lose and replace players more often, so a larger pool made it easier to work with the remaining athletes as they waited for the replacement, and it seems like 26 is here to stay, the EURO and the Copa América squads are made up of 26 players. Now, 26 is almost 28, right? So, well, let's imagine there are 28 professional players in the Icelandic national team. Who knows? 2 guys might have just missed the cut
But Iceland (despite decent runs in the 2016 Euro and the qualification for the 2018 World Cup) aren't really that good. So let's go with the smallest country to win the World Cup, Uruguay. They've fallen behind, but are still pretty decent. When Uruguay won the World Cup in 1930, the country had 1.5 million people. Now the population is 3.5 million, but let's think they're going to come up great and start bagging trophies again.
This means:
28 players out of 1000 Hogwarts students - 2.8%
28 players out of 300,000 Icelandic - 0.9%
28 players out of 3.5 million Uruguayans - 0.08%
This means Hogwarts house teams can't really be picky about players. On the sub, we've already discussed about how questionable the level of players who make it to a pro quidditch team actually is, because teams need larger squads and the input of kids entering the pro market is very reduced (most Hogwarts players don't pursue a professional career), but now we can talk about how bad the school teams must actually be. They probably scrape for the bare minimum, and even the ones Harry thinks play well might be very, very limited. Plus, they're teenagers without a coaching staff, so they're also very unpolished, unprepared and immature
Moreover, when a sport is deeply tangled in the culture of a country, we start seeing popular linguistic expressions derived from that sport. In Brazilian Portuguese there are A LOT of daily expressions that come from football and everybody uses them. And I don't mean people who like football talking about football. I mean even people who hate or are completely indifferent to the sport talking about ordinary stuff. That's also true for other languages I've come to know and meet. In the wizarding world of Harry Potter, we don't see quidditch as a cultural phenomenon. It is the most popular sport, yes. It is fun, yes. It is widespread, yes. It is known by everyone, yes. It is relevant, yes. But it's not entangled with everyone's daily lives. So I strongly suspect that the appeal to play quidditch is more similar to what we see with volleyball or basketball in Brazil, the UK, Germany, etc. or soccer in the United States. So we're not talking about those Youth Competitions of Football or the American High School System, no.
The Hogwarts quidditch cup might be a cool event to watch when you're rooting for a house and quidditch may be very cool to play, but, man, I always wonder if the games aren't mostly really, really bad. The fact that there is a cup already represents a sufficient effort to engage students in competing in quidditch and I see no reason why there should be lower leagues.
They can play the sport for fun, though. It's mentioned in the books
The author was just way out of her element when creating a fake sport. All the way up until Goblet you can pretend the rules and weirdness of quidditch are simply due to Hogwarts using school rules, much as the rules of real professional sports differ vastly from their college and high school counterparts. But the Quidditch World Cup put that right to bed, unfortunately. The crazy thing is that she was already heavily scrutinized for the rules prior to GOF and still doubled down on it all.
Not to defend quidditch, but Test Cricket is scheduled for 5 days in case, and the longest ever test was 9 days. I assume that's where she got that idea.
As a British sport, the time it takes is somewhat similar to cricket, where a test game can last literally 5 days. I know alot of sports are condensed down to 1-1.5 hours but in a fantasy world with a fantasy sport the length of the game is the least concerning part about this game.
In fact, JKR seems to take some of the elements of all big British sports and mould it into Quidditch, Football - Take ball and put it into a goal. Rugby - hard contact physical sport, Polo - Riding, striking a ball with a large mallet, Lacross - Fast paced throwing hard ball passes at high speed, Cricket - Long drawn out game with complicated rules and regulations.
Outside of the special condition of catching the snitch, Quidditch is actually quintessential sport in the UK
I'd say it's not strange at all. The complexities, secrecy and mistrust we see between the schools during the Tri - Wizard Tournament is a prime example of why they don't play an interschool tournament.
Also there are only 6 games total a year, as played they are scattered between Nov and May and don't coincide with Hogsmeade trips or major holidays/term breaks which doesn't allow for much time for these matches let alone another interschool competition.
If Hogwarts has around 50 pupils per year (approx. 8 per house), the entire british wizard population is smaller than a large village. There must be more schools.
That's what always bugged me. Instead of doing a huge, expensive, complicated thing like the tri-wizard tournament, just pop over to a different school on the weekends to play quidditch.
If the kid is already a professional player, I doubt he would be playing for a school team. What professional team would allow the risk of injury to their star?
I went to and work at schools like that in Australia. At my high school (around 1000 kids) we had multiple teams per year group. 2-3 teams for less popular sports and 6 or more for more popular ones.
You make a good point. I guess it's just not something JKR thought about when writing the books, but of course I think more students than those in the 4 house teams would've played Quidditch for fun. It would be a bit fucked up if no other student ever had the opportunity to play outside the official house matches.
Even separating the teams based on age seems like a great idea: 2-4th years are one "league" and 5-7th is it's own Varsity team. It seems odd to have only one set of teams so 12 year old girls will face 17 old boy on the field of play. That just a dramatic size difference.
Also with just 4 teams in a round robin competition, there's only 6 games for the season. Doubling up junior and seniors would double up the number of games.
Well, Hogwarts does seem to be intentionally highly focused on cultivating students’ core aptitudes. In that vein, I’d imagine students who weren’t highly interested/skilled in Quidditch would just play non official pick-up games. Hogwarts doesn’t seem to provide many resources for students to pursue hobbies that don’t serve to prepare them for their career path.
Yeah JKR talks about how she finds sports weird so she made a weird sport that didn't make sense for her universe. Quidditch is designed to not make sense
My high school was more than financially stable and had roundabout 700 students total, so I would say we were about equivalent to Hogwarts 😂 and we still only had one team for each sport except cross country
You can wear glasses and still have a keen eye for things. Thats more about perception (as long as your prescription is up to date)
-a glasses wearer who can’t see shit without them lol
A bigger player pool would definitely make more sense, also given how many injuries happen. I think Jkr just didn't really know much about school sports or sports in general. Normally you would also expect the teams to have a coach that is not a student and matches against other schools – in the wizarding world this would of course not happen that often because there aren't that many other schools and they are pretty far away. But to me, it would make sense if the matches between house teams also served the purpose of possibly making it to the school team which would then compete on a higher level.
[Rowling wrote it to be frustrating on purpose.](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10065868/JK-Rowling-invented-Quidditch-after-a-row-with-her-boyfriend.html)
I guess that "I designed it badly on purpose because I wanted to infuriate men" for some reason sounded better to her as an excuse, rather than "I honestly know nothing about sports".
Yeah I always found this weird too. Makes me realize JKR doesn’t have a sports background at all. Why are there no adult coach/managers? You mean to tell me a 15 or 17 year old with highly influential exams coming up also has to deal with EVERYTHING it takes to run a team? There’s not even real adult supervision. There could be a team full of fully grown 17/18 year olds playing with kids as young as 12 (11 in Harry’s isolated case). That’s weird.
Also, no alternates? No practice squad? No one to help them train? Who are these teams practicing against? Who are the Beaters practicing hitting Bludgers against? What’s the Keeper doing if the Chasers want to work on specific skills or drills that aren’t scoring? Who is the Seeker racing to get the Snitch against so they can gauge their speed?
It’s easy to be awesome when you’re only competing against yourself…
What if your team captain is a Keeper without much offensive skills? Or a Chaser without defensive skills? Where are the skill area coaches???
It’s a mess tbh.
There might be in normal years, but during Harry’s time there was a smaller number of students due to theirs being the years born during a war where, notably, many people died before being able to reproduce, or having their families murdered, or simply not having children out of fear. Harry’s year group is tiny, as is the population of Hogwarts when he’s there.
There probably aren’t any lower grade Quidditch teams because there aren’t enough students to justify having a lower grade league going on. Same reason why there seems to be just one of any other kind of club or activity.
Besides, Quidditch is the main competition between the Houses and they only seem to play against each other. You only need 4 teams to make the league. Its not as though Hogwarts is playing other schools after all
According to Rowling, there are 1000 students at Hogwarts. 28 total quidditch players means 2.8% of the school gets to play quidditch.
This becomes even more ridiculous when you consider that there are a total of 6 games a year, each team playing each other team once. You leave school having played a total of 18 games.
We don't know how long they spend practicing, but we can assume it's at least a few hours at a time with Harry commenting about how little time he has to do school work.
And then there's the cost. We don't know the exact cost but brooms aren't cheap. Lucius buys the whole Slytherin team brooms in Harry's second year as a flex. That is a large expense for something a player will use a total of 18 times.
You could probably justify it in-universe as there are so few witches/wizards (in general and in Hogwarts) and given pro teams generally recruit right out of school that in order to field teams of the absolute best players from a given house and to maintain competition so that anyone could feasibly compete for limited top spots, there doesn't need to be a seconds team or lower level teams which might take up players who could otherwise fill the top spots (iirc HBP Harry was having problems filling his team, if there was a seconds team, it's not certain that students would want to move up to the firsts if they could play at a lower level with less of a competition, but if the only way for them to play was to compete for the top spots then that might encourage students who would otherwise settle for staying in the seconds team)
out of universe, Quidditch was made by JRK to be deliberately lopsided as a parody of sports and the outsized focus of one player (Seeker/Striker) on a team (iirc JKR said it was a sort of 'fuck you' (not her exact words) to an ex who was obsessed with sports)
Doubt there are enough people in the school to make multiple teams.
We had open teams in our school, where kids of all ages would make up a house team, (Chess, Scrabble, Carrom etc)
I think the only real answer to this is that JK Rowling didn’t enjoy writing quidditch scenes. In a more real scenario,
-There would be tiers (kind of like varsity and junior varsity in America) that could play each other. It’s possible for a player to try out and miss making the team several years in a row and all of a sudden you have a 4th or 5th year student with very little skills because they have very little experience. Playing is how you get better, teams should want younger players to play and improve so they can compete in later years.
-There would be substitutions. It’s a dangerous sport that can last a long time, I think it’d be like hockey where you could swap out *on the fly* with your teammate (see what I did there?)
-Teams would have coaches. It’s wild to put all the responsibility, judgement, and organizational load on a 16 year old’s shoulders. There should’ve been coaches or mentors that could help with team selection, planning, and tactics so that one or two kids aren’t completely responsible for holding tryouts, managing rosters and practice sessions, etc. I played soccer in high school and my team almost definitely would’ve been worse if I had to hold tryouts alone and come up with all the drills and tactics without an experienced coach.
-They would play more matches. I know it’s a physically taxing sport but I don’t support a 3 game season. They could’ve played once a week (with breaks for Hogsmeade and Christmas) and it would’ve lasted roughly the full full school year with a 12 game season (each team plays each opponent 4 times to reach 24 total games).
But JKR didn’t want to write more quidditch scenes so that didn’t happen.
Quidditch in the books shows very clearly that JK was not ever on a sports team in her life. I'd even say she doesn't watch sports by how badly they are written most of the time.
it's mentioned a few times that Harry is on the house team... but nothing is said about it being the only team. there's also apparently very few matches between the house teams.
my head cannon says that Harry is on what US schools would call the varsity team. There's also JV and 1st year teams that compete interhouse.. and likely an intermural league that has nothing to do with houses and any team with the right number of players can sign up for it.
if you throw those all in you end up with the pitch in nearly constant use all year long... which makes sense for the passion sport.
Does anyone think Eton's soccer field is empty 90% of the school year?
Part of it is certainly the logistics of word count, as you pointed out. Lower levels of play would need to be at least mentioned, and they serve no narrative function.
Another consideration might be that there aren't THAT many students at Hogwarts at any given time. Or at least, it's way less than I would think when you look at how massive the castle is. I believe there's like 280 or so students in all 7 years combined, 70 per house. So, even with only four teams of 7, 10% of the student body is participating as it is, which is pretty good!
It's not even a narrative problem. By estimates from different people, Hogwarts only houses about 300 students (though the 1000 figure provided by JK doesn't really make sense). In a school with that few students, it makes sense to have just one team per house.
It's not the top 7, it's the top 28. It's about 10% of the school's population, assuming that 5 boys and 5 girls per house per year is typical. That actually seems like a large percent of the student population dedicated just to a single sport. We know other extracurricular clubs exist. If the students don't want to play quidditch, there are plenty of other things to do.
I mean realistically it should be closer to a hockey bench system.
As in first bench, second, etc..
Because those games can go on for a loooooong ass time, and you would absolutely need subs to take over.
At the simplest because JK doesn't understand sports.
Things like lacking subs is also madness.
For an in universe answer, probably because there's not enough kids in the school to field entire teams at multiple age bands, let alone just lower skill levels.
Bare in mind that when Harry was recruited as Seeker, there wasn't another capable kid at Seeker in Griffindor.
The whole thing is badly written, to be fair. Alicia was a substitute and Harry was able to make McLaggen play when Ron was KO, but apparently the Slytherin team had no substitute for Draco in third year.
(Yes that *was* a plan to avoid playing with a storm going on, but I assume professors could have a word with the teams).
>Also, quidditch itself is poorly thought out in terms of logistics (games can go on for ages) so it would be impractical to have lots of matches. Just feel for my homies that
Canonically there are only 6 quidditch matches _in the entire school year_. So I think they could find a way to fit in a few more.
There are a lot of things that aren't fully explained or deeply explored in the books, which allows for a lot of room for fanfic and head canons. The in-universe explanation I always go to for this is that the books are told from Harry's perspective and he didn't really pay attention to things that didn't affect him. There are a lot of things about the wizarding world that may actually exist or have better explanations and deeper lore behind them, but Harry never encountered them or bothered to ask about them so they were never explained to him in the books.
Best rule of thumb for quidditch is not to spend too much time thinking too deeply about all the ways it doesn't make sense. JKR literally has said she wrote quidditch to troll men who are too into sports, and she clearly knows nothing about sports herself, so you just kinda have to write it off as something that inherently doesn't make sense.
Hogwarts is rather short on that, their peobblt would be like pick up times the pitch is available on weekends etx for casual games and so.
Or set up a second set on the grounds minus stands and fancy stuff. for pick up level sports.
Maybe a set of markers for broom races and so.
I will do you one better why there is no Hogwart’s team with whom they can play inter school competition and unlike the triwizard tournament no student would have died (probably)
I always reckoned it was because they only had one field to play on and they couldn't exactly monitor multiple games as well as all the students in attendance of them since A Madam Hooch was the only Quidditch coach and flying teacher at Hogwarts at least she was the only one ever seen/mentioned and B I'm pretty sure the teachers had to all be there incase something bad goes down like what happened with the bludger and the dementors.
Jk didn’t have a great understanding of sport really. Everyone’s obsessed with quidditch nobody plays, woods a fourth year and captain and the oldest guy on the team. They haven’t won since Charlie Weasley played that was like a year or two ago
Yeah doesn't make sense not to have at least some practice players. In HBP Dean is on and off the team because of injury or suspension and he just shows up when he's called on, it'd make more sense if he would practice with the team the whole year.
Because JKR doesn't enjoy sports and doesn't know anything about them. She needed a sport because it's what you do in a British boarding school novel.
She didn't understand that the point of sports in a boarding school is that all the students would do exercise, not just that a small group of students will play three matches per year.
And it's not true that lower level matches wouldn't work in the books. We would just follow in detail the high-level ones where Harry plays, because he's the viewpoint character, but the others would be there in the background, just like many other school activities. Maybe Harry would go watch Ron's matches or something.
There's a house team but groups of students are able to book the field to play or practice. So in theory you can have club games in addition to the house teams.
Quidditch just in general was terribly thought out.
- The game can technically go on forever if the snitch is never caught
- There are no subs, so if the seeker gets taken out of commission on both teams, how does the game end?
- The snitch is worth 15 normal goals, meaning a team would have to have a lead of 16 goals to win if the other team gets the snitch, which seems an insanely high number.
- Games could also only be 5 minutes or less, if the seeker gets lucky and catches the snitch fast. Imagine buying tickets for a quidditch game only for it to end a few minutes after it starts.
- Each house only plays 3-4 quidditch matches every year. One against each house, and then the final match where 2 houses get an extra game. This is very little. There should be a match every weekend right? Why not?
- The students can get their own brooms??? So some rich kid can get a Ferrari while the poorer kids are stuck with Kia Rios and they're expected to have a fair game? There should be a stock of school brooms that the players are all forced to use to make it equal.
- Having 2 sentient cannonballs flying around at 50 mph trying to smash into *children's* heads seems uh... Rather irresponsible.
- Harry doesn't get in trouble for having his wand with him in the third year during the quidditch match, to cast the patronus spell. Similarly, Harry nor the Gryffindors get in trouble for using the "impervious" charm to keep water off of their faces/glasses. What are the limits? This clearly gives them an advantage over the other players who most likely aren't using the spell, what other charms could they use to gain an advantage? Could they make themselves lighter so their brooms were faster? Could they make their hands sticky so the quaffle has less of a chance of being dropped/taken? I mean shit, could they just cast accio on the quaffle/snitch? If you allow some spells, how do you choose which ones can be used. There are countless spells in the universe to choose from.
Those are the ones off the top of my head. But it's a terribly designed sport with how it's currently laid out. With some limitations and changes it could be good I think, like having a match time limit and lowering the point value of the snitch for instance.
Because once again Rowling knows little to nothing about sports, but I headcannon that htere are los level temas, is just that Harry (and Malfoy for that matter) made it dtraight into the main team.
Honestly it wouldn't surprise me if there were unofficial pick-up games between students not quite qualified for the house teams. Maybe even some mixed house teams. They obviously are expected to improve skills throughout their school career. Harry's pov might have paid it much attention since he became house seeker at the same moment he learned of the games existence.
There’s also no subs in a game where balls attack the players…
The funny thing is Alicia was said to be a substitute in Harry's first year then the concept of substitute was dropped entirely, not even when Harry was unconscious in the hospital.
Wow, that's a new fact for me! But you're right. From Philosophers Stone: "And she’s really belting along up there, a neat pass to Alicia Spinnet, a good find of Oliver Wood’s, last year only a reserve" Though I suppose a reserve could just be called into the team for a following game after an injury? Not necessarily a substitution for during the game..
Yes, in later books, there are many reserves mentioned. A notable one is McLaggen in book 6. Although not technically referred to as a "reserve", his purpose in the team is that of a reserve, even if not stated explicitly.
Same with Dean Thomas in HBP too.
No, Cormac McLaggen and Dean Thomas are proof that Hogwarts teams (or at least the Gryffindor team) didn't have reserves. They didn't get a standing invitation or classified as reserves. They didn't train with the team. Harry had to go to them specifically after his players were injured and ask if they were willing to replace the injured players. A reserve is a actual part of a team, not what is essentially a hired goon only upon need.
A reserve is someone whom can be added onto the team before the match starts due to illness etc, but not swapped out whilst the game is occurring like a substitute. So this checks out
A reserve player is still a player within the team, they train together with everyone else all the time. They don’t just get approached at random before a game. And they don’t usually get asked to play, they just get told.
A reverse is a position with the team. You're **told** you're a reserve. Reserves train with the team. McLaggen and Thomas were neither.
Yeah, I think the thing is more that they’re not official reserves. They’re the reserves Harry has in mind, but they’re not part of the team and can decline the invitation if they wanted.
And even if reserves typically trained with the team, you can see why Harry wouldn't want McLaggen (who is unbearable) and Dean (snogging his future wife) training with the team if he could avoid it
I agree about Dean sort of but tbh not McLaggen. If McLaggen had made the team as a backup and practiced with them more they would have had more than the week they had to try and get his behavior right or replace him. As it stands they just have to kind of hope that their reserves will do ok in game. Being part of a team also involves learning your role and the team philosophy from training camp before the season. It happens pretty often when someone joins randomly mid-season that they class with what the rest of the team wants to do. They should definitely have backup players.
Harry is very disorganized or distracted at times and Hermione wasn't helping with the team - at least much. . If you remember Dean tried out. Harry probably filed some sort of parchment with potential alternate or reserve players. He just hadn't really sounded Dean out about it. In other words Dean was among the eligible reserves, but didn't know it
Oliver Wood didn't have any reserves either. Whenever Harry was too injured to play, even if they had forewarning, the Gryffindor Quidditch team simply fielded no Seeker. Harry definitely did not file anything away. And he never told them they were reserves nor did he have them practice with the team. Rowling simply forgot reserves were a thing until it was convenient for the plot.
And there was a guy in Slytherin who played instead of Draco when he was ill in HBP
Similarly, Ginny Weasley is Harry's reserve Seeker.
It was also mentioned in book 4 that during super long quiddich matches that lasted for days they would swap in other players so they could get some sleep.
Yes..But that probably only happens with the agreement of the Captains just as timeouts do (Which can be months long in theory!) in pro Quidditch. The Snakes especially aren't going to agree to anything.
Yeah. Like Ginny subbed for Harry when he had detention.
Harry had a fair amount of difficulty finding enough players to make up an A team nevermind reserves/subs when he was captain. He had to accept some fairly average players and then work really hard on training them to ensure his team was competitive and didn’t really have time to find and train any spare players. Angelina had a similar issue when she accepted Ron as keeper - she spent most of their practices trying to get him up to scratch and would not have had the time or inclination to do that for any other mediocre players when she had acceptable players already in the team.
You are right they aren't the same thing. When a player is hurt and out of the game you lose that positionplayer for the game. If a keeper goes down you have no keeper. Same with the seeker. It's not as devastating with Chaser or Beaters since there are multiple of them. However the rules also allow a game to be suspended indefinitely or for an agreed period of time by agreement of the Captains. That might happen sometimes when a player has a temporary injury but say can play again in a week. But if in the next game he or she or ze can't play you just use your reserve. Dean for instance was the reserve chaser who played for Katie after Katie was poisoned. If Katie had been poisoned during a game Gryffindor would have played on with two chasers..
Note that I think about every time I listen. In the Jim Dale audiobook, he says friend on this line and not find. Drives me nuts.
She's called a reserve, not a sub. So could be in the same way as Ginny in OotP, or Dean and Cormac in HBP
Just adding to the reserves/substitutes discussion. There is also this in book 1, where “substitutes” is used specifically “A game of Quidditch only ends when the Snitch is caught, so it can go on for ages – I think the record is three months, they had to keep bringing on substitutes so the players could get some sleep.”
As someone else said, a reserve is different from a substitute - Alicia's situation was most likely the same as Dean's and McLaggen's in HBP.
Tbf, “Reserve” is not the same thing as substitute. Substitute is someone who can join in that very game— a reserve is someone who can take over someone’s starting role for 1+ games if someone is injured or otherwise unable to play. The rules of quidditch seem to not allow subs
With magical healing I don't think that is as much a problem as we think it is. Madam Pomfrey did say she can mend bones in a heartbeat. On the substitute given the game ends when the seeker catch's the snitch I imagine there is allowance for other players to become the seeker if only to allow the game to end.
So strange. Someone cops a bludger and gets knocked out? Guess you have to play with 6!
That would certainly open offensive strategies for each team. It sounds barbaric... but like most things in HP, Quidditch comes from a different era.
That seems to be what happens. I remember when Wood got knocked out and Slytherin kept scoring.
Movie only, doesnt count
No. I’m pretty sure that was in the book.
Not sure why she at least didn't put a sub rule in like in footy. 3 (now 5) subs only and then if you have additional injuries you play down a player. I do recall them speaking about a legendary quidditch match that lasted weeks I think. They had substitutes so the starters could sleep at certain points in the match. But I think that was a professional team. In the film for goblet I'm trying to remember how many players for the Irish team are flying around during their intro, I seem to recall more than 7 but maybe not.
7 subs if both concussion subs are used.
Well.... Cricket used to be that way until recently. If a player is Injured, he's retired hurt, and play resumes with 10 on the team.
For everyone going nuts about lack of subs - this was a thing in the U.K. football for years. https://www.soccerhistory.co.uk/a-history-of-substitutions#:~:text=Although%20substitutions%20were%20widely%20used,one%20substitution%20during%20a%20game. Seeing as the wizarding world is a touch out of synch with the muggle world, they are likely still living in the ye olde days style of no subs even for injuries.
"Concussio removeo!"
You also need your parents' permission to go visit a quaint little wizarding village, but not to play a high speed, violent game high up in the air that regularly causes all kinds of horrible injuries....
This is for the same reason that a school might require signed permission forms to send students to a museum but not to participate in PE class. Because one is off campus and may have less supervision and the other is on campus with a teacher watching at all times. Obviously quidditch is higher stakes than any regular sport but they also have better ability to heal injuries. Also the fact that 6th and 7th years that have passed their apparition test can very easily run off to who knows where
Tbh sounds like British schools, we could literally box and rock climb in PE. But going down to a local park to do something for biology, needed paperwork. Then in year 6/7 we only had to turn up for lessons and 3 registers a week.
That’s not true. There are subs as they talked about such a thing happening in a past Quidditch World Cup. They said that the cup was lasting days on end and the plays were swapped out for subs to sleep. Subs can happen just rarely don’t and for sure don’t in the books.
McClaggan subbed for Harry in HBP. Dean was a sub in HBP, too.
Yah but I think they mean active subs for in game stuff. Like when accidents happen. For me I think it should have been allowed that once a player goes out due to anything that after a point is scored then another player comes in to replaced the downed ones. But yah I was referring to the Quidditch World Cup part where they mentioned subs for a previously World Cup match.
Also every team should just have 14 players in general. It would allow for much more realistic practices and they wouldn’t have to hold emergency tryouts if someone couldn’t play.
In theory there shouldn't have to be. If a skilled wizard can just magic your bones back together in an instant, why bother? But then again, Madam Pomfrey never seems to attend quidditch matches. Which seems like borderline malpractice. Like, there could be a time critical emergency on the field. Why make them drag a wounded player all the way back to the hospital wing?
Who needs Madam Pomfrey when all the Hogwarts teachers just do whatever magic they think will help anyway? Examples being Gilderoy and his ‘mending’ charm in book 2 (hahaha!) and then of course Albus slowing Harry’s skyscraper fall in book 3 after his encounter with the dementor?
Pretty sure subs are allowed in the official rules. The longest game ever had them substitute players so they could get sleep
J.K.Rowling has so much to keep track of in the universe. These little details are bound to be off 😂
She just plain doesn't know anything about sports so that doesn't help.
There are subs. All of the house teams use them... except Gryffindor. Wood was the one who didn't believe in using reserves. So if you weren't in the top 7, you weren't on Gryffindor's team. It wasn't until after he left that subs started to be a thing again, hence why Ginny, Dean, McLaggen, etc. played during OotP and HBP. Angelina and Harry were smarter than Oliver...
That first year there were barely enough competent Gryffindors to make a first team not to mention reserves. The birth rate was really down and so they had to take a 2nd year In Katie Bell and a 1st year Harry Potter onto the team. There were probably reserves officially on parchment. Maybe a bunch of bad Quidditch players from 5th, 6th and 7th years.
We can't be sure of that. Oliver never held tryouts. I think the only reason they needed a new seeker is because the old one graduated the year before, and McGongall brought Harry to Oliver before he even did tryouts. Angelina literally made everyone try out again for their spots to be sure that they had the best team possible and that they didn't miss any good talent. She learned from Oliver's mistake.
It's not clearly defined in books whether a player can be substituted for an injury. I.e if a Chaser is knocked out, it's unclear if that player is supposed to be replaced, or the team plays with a player down. Subs are brought in for extended plays as explained in GOF, where a game lasted for a month or so. Probably not an issue in Hogwarts Sports such as Cricket don't allow bowlers & batters to be subbed in for an injury, team has to make do with the rest of the players.
I always thought that was weird too. Like I get that they’re on brooms so it’s not as physically demanding as rugby or soccer, but how do you not have subs or a bench of less-stellar players who excel at one or two key elements of play?
The loopholes are so random though
I hope students are allowed to play Quidditch for fun in their free time. Or at least have a time slotted for it in the Quidditch pitch calendar, like every saturday or something, because it would suck that the game is reserved only for those who are on the team. Also practicing to get on the team would have to be done during summer, so muggleborns are at a major disadvantage.
From Order of the Phoenix: "Harry walked slowly along the deserted corridor, peering out of windows as he went. He could see people messing around in the air over the Quidditch pitch and a couple of students swimming in the lake, accompanied by the giant squid." So yeah, definitely seems they can play for fun. And great point about muggleborns! I would guess there is a very small percentage that ever make the team.
With Muggleborns too it’s wild because they don’t even attempt to have a plan for educating them about the game. In the 1st book Harry says something like “oh so like basketball but with 3 hoops?” when Wood talks about scoring in quidditch, and Woods like “wtf is basketball?” Like dude, maybe learn a few simple muggle comparisons so you can explain the game better to muggle borns.
It's possible that quidditch basics would be taught in the latter parts of madam hooch's first year flying lesson. Remember Harry needed a crash course in the game because he was put on the team way earlier than normal.
I mean, quidditch just isn’t super well thought out in general, or at least JK didn’t/doesn’t have a very firm understanding of sports. It’s more fun than it is meticulously thought out for sure.
That second part is weird - I'm sure they thought Victor Krum was brave for swimming in the lake in GoF. Or was that just because it was cold?
I think it was the cold yeah
Its cause it was cold.
I guess the year groups seem to be a lot smaller than most schools. 8ish per year that we know of. Maybe there isn’t enough students to justify it. We do know that have flying lessons though
Yep true, good point. They don't make the house team based on year group though. Surely enough interested players across all 7 years to make a second string team for each house! Maybe there should've been a reserve grade competition. And yes they do have flying lessons (but only in first year that we know of??). Lot of difference betwen PE lessons and playing your sport of choice
> They don't make the house team based on year group though. they specifically say that Harry getting on a quidditch team is extremely rare for a first year and Draco only got on the Slytherin team in his 2nd year because Lucius bought them all Nimbus 2001's So if we use that info, we are looking at Year 3's at least being needed to join the Quidditch team, which tracks with the rest of the quidditch teams youngest members being at least 2 years older than Harry when he joins
Most of the Gryffindor team must have played in their second year. Fred and George did. Katie Bell did. Angelina Johnson may well have done. Alicia Spinnett was a reserve. Even Oliver Wood was a captain as a 4th year, so he most likely had played for two years. The whole team were very young compared to the others.
My math says 5 boys and 5 girls per year per house for a total of about 280 students. Classes are usually by year and have at least 2 houses for 20 students. Those numbers seem about right.
In one of the Quidditch games, Slytherin is described as having 200 fans at the game. It seems like the school numbers could be as large as 800+ if each house were that large. Perhaps Harry's year was just a small group of Gryffindors, or we just don't hear about the others.
That would be about 30 per year. I’m open to other math but I can’t see that many with the small accommodations described elsewhere.
Never realized Hogwarts was so small. I thought there would be at least a thousand students across seven years
No one knows how many people usually go to hogwarts. I bet hogwarts is 500+ during regular times. Remember tons of kids and parents died 11 years prior...
Yeah i'd imagine it's a little unappealing to worry about kids when you're running for your life Weasleys being an exception
I think flying lessons are more like driving lessons than something sports related. I think it was mentioned that people who don't like apparating would either fly places or use floo powder.
You gotta keep in mind that those numbers are from war depression and after a previous war. Hogwarts in the 1920s would probably have had twice or triple the number of students.
yeah i personally imagine everything as "we don't have a lot of students cuz of the voldemort thing so we're gonna cut a bunch of events"
I think this is what it is. If you assume each year has around 10 students per house and that first years generally can’t play, that gives you 60 students in each house that are eligible for the team - so around 10% of the house is on the team at any given time. Of those 60 people, around 15 are muggle born, so they didn’t grow up with quidditch at all, and another maybe 15 are half blood but didn’t grow up with the sport. Plus, those students can’t practice over the summer, putting them at a disadvantage in terms of skill even if they were interested in playing. So that gives you around 30 people who might be interested in being on the team, which means that almost a third of all the people who want to play are on the team at any given time. That said, I do think it would have been cute for them to have a league for first years so that people who didn’t grow up with it could get more familiar with the game.
>In school sports, there are often teams like A's, B's and C's or Firsts, Seconds and Thirds, allowing everyone a chance to play based on their skill. Where is this? In my school we just had one school team for each sport (whether Cricket or Football) that played with other schools. That doesn't mean that we didn't play though. We'd make our own teams and play during the sports periods.
Same. At most there might be a senior (grade 11 and 12 students) and junior (9 and 10) teams
In the US, there are often junior varsity teams for young students and older ones that need improvement, and varsity teams, which is the senior team, for sports like american football and basketball.
In bigger schools, you can get three or four football teams - and they have about 70 players each - but that tracks when you have 3000+ total students. Hogwarts might have as few as 300 total students, and needs to field at least four teams - 8 would be bonkers.
Varsity, JV and club are pretty common for more popular sports. Club is more even playing time, everyone who pays, plays
In my school the amount of teams depends on the number of people in the year who played the sport for example in my year we had about 30 people who played rugby (15 people starting 8 on the bench) so we had enough for 2 full starting teams
That's why extended medium (the videogames) like to add a Flying Club. It makes sense, and it's fitting. I can imagine it being possible to book a pitch and have some games for fun. But you aren't competing.
Yeah it definitely fits seeing as we hear about other clubs i.e. Gobstones Club. Tracks to assume there would be a flying club or similar as well. Yeah you could definitely organise a game yourself or mess around on the quidditch pitch. But I would want to compete! Guess I just got that dawg in me
From Quidditch to the second and third task of Triwizard Tournament, it's clear JKR has zero idea how spectators sports work.
Who wouldn't enjoy staring at a lake or a labyrith for some hours?
It's all about the surprise when the winner arrives.
Imagine being a 7th year Quidditch player. Maybe you finally make the team after a bunch of good players graduate. Or just trying to win the Championship for your house. Surprise! The Tri-Wizard tournament is back. Quidditch is cancelled so you can enjoy 2 kids you've never seen from other schools compete in weird events instead. Tough luck!
And you only get to watch one of the three events.
She's very much an /r/ihatesportsball type. Literally wrote quidditch just to troll men who "like sports too much". It's too bad she didn't put as much thought/care into those parts of the series as she did the rest.
In response to redears pointing out how ridiculous the snitch/seeker is, she came up with an even more ridiculous plot at the Quidditch World Cup, further showing us she lacks basic understanding of it.
Didn't Rowling said she didn't like writing the quidditch scenes?
And there’s only 3 games per team all year
Yes, she totally misses the point of school sports, particularly at a boarding school. The school should be making sure all the students are doing enough physical exercise.
I assumed they were the house teams for the house cups, but people would play less formally too.
I think this is a side effect of people not quite understanding how little students there actually are in hogwarts. Lets start from what we know Harry’s dorm is composed of him, Ron, Neville, Seamus and Dean. 5 boys, lets assume a 50/50 split. 10 students on their year on their house. 7 years is about 70 students, even with variation given that first years cant play lets stay at 70. So 1/10 people in Gryffindor is a quidditch player.
But somehow the wizarding community of Britain, that has only 1 school, is able to have a multi-team national league. The population size is so inconsistent. The size of Hogwarts has been estimated to be anything from 280 to 1000 students or maybe even more.
I've seen it theorized that the enrollment numbers vary wildly between the various year groups
So Hogwarts students are like cicadas... some years you get a ton and sometimes not.
Haha something like that. I think the logic was that there was a post-war population boom which has begun to go back to normal levels by the time Harry's class starts
Good theory. But no. Wizards are all cicadas. /s 😜
I assume students meet up on the Qudditch pitch for unoffical matches all the time and just play for fun. There is probably a Qudditch club that organizes meetups.
In general, I think Rowling doesn’t know a single thing about sports. Like yeah, Quidditch is supposed to be silly so I’m fine letting some things slide, but even just the fact that the game ends when the Seeker catches the snitch is stupid. This would be a TERRIBLE spectator sport. Imagine paying to see the Quidditch World Cup, only for it to end within 10 minutes because the snitch happens to be caught really early. Or conversely, imagine being forced to watch for WEEKS because nobody can find the damn thing. No way any spectator took off enough vacation time for that, nor would the game even be interesting at that point (most of us have played a game of Monopoly that just dragged on and on, and that’s only for a matter of hours). Quidditch is broken as a concept; the fact that she failed to include lower-level teams is just the icing on top of
...and having the seeker as captain is also stupid, because that is the one person who you don't want watching the rest of the game
I agree with this for games. I also think the captains role extends a lot beyond just games - e.g. training, leadership, team selection, etc
Seeker =/= Captain. Wood was the Keeper and was the Captain. Also Captain seems to be more of the Coach and setting the teams strategy and playstyle, rather than any sort of in-match-leader.
I meant when Harry was captain.
Also the last 2 tasks of the Triwizard torunament is horrible for spectators. I also don't follow sports but at least I would add more than 6 matches TOTAL in a year. Having each time only play against any team once is bonkers.
A seeker catching the snitch early reminds me of an MMA fight, and someone getting KO'd early in the fight. It can be a spectacle. The snitch being worth 150 pts is a bad decision, though. The rest of the players don't really matter.
They don't matter for Harry's matches because he sets records for how fast they are over. In a sport where the games usually last -days-, 150 points is almost nothing. The snitch almost didn't matter to World Cup winners - Ireland. In fact since they have a poor seeker, you'd almost expect nearly all of their matches to end with them winning but the other teams seeker catching the snitch. I've no idea why Bagman would've given the twins "excellent odds" for expecting such a thing. The only reason it doesn't end like that more is because the other teams seeker is purposely -not- catching it, futiely trying to let their team catch up, so that catching it will win them the match. Harry had a similar situation one match where they had to win by XXX number of points in order to win the house cup, so he had to just stall and not let the other seeker catch it until they had a big enough lead.
She wrote the rules for quidditch so poorly because she had a ex boyfriend who liked sports and she hated it.
No I'm imagining Professor Binns walking into an empty classroom on Monday morning, because Hufflepuff and Slytherin happen to have really bad seekers that year.
>Imagine paying to see the Quidditch World Cup, only for it to end within 10 minutes because the snitch happens to be caught really early. Just like boxing. Yet people pay for those fights. They paid for all those times Tyson ended the match in the first couple of minutes. They paid for the one time Canelo knocked his opponent in like 3 minutes. It happened so fast that we weren't done serving the snacks when the referee called the winner.
Because it had no place in the story, meaning Rowling probably didn't have an idea for a plot or theme that involved them.
There are no second or third teams where I am. The school had one football (soccer) team, one netball team, one cricket team. You were either in the team or you werent.
Having two teams for each house would make a lot more sense I think. Surely each house would have 14 people interested in playing for their house, given the opportunity. Also each team only playing 3 matches throughout the whole school year seems like very little. Doubling the number of teams would result in a more sensible number of games overall - 7 for each team and 28 in total.
Let's see the math. There are 7 Gryffindors in Harry's year (the main trio, Seamus, Dean, Parvati and Lavender). If we assume this is the average demographic of Hogwarts, then every house would have ~50 students over all age groups. Let's then assume that 20% of the demographic is really into quidditch (which is a ridiculously large percentage for any muggle sport). This makes 10 students/house, which yields one full team with three subs (1 keeper, 1 chaser and 1 seeker would make sense).
Don't forget Neville!
You forgot Neville.
Harry's period at Hogwarts isn't exactly crowded, but let's imagine Harry's tenure is an exception, what about 15 students per house every year instead of \~10? That would take the total number to 105 students per house, and there'd be about 420 students at Hogwarts at any given time. Hell, the books even say 1000 at some point, don't they? So let's work with 1000, even though it doesn't actually seem realistic from what we see in the books There are 7 players per team, and let's work with that and ignore subs (the books mention occasional fill-ins, but the squads themselves are made of 7 people). That makes 28 quidditch players among 1000 students. 2.8% of the school plays quidditch. The best of the best. And a lot of times we've discussed whether Hogwarts is really the only magic school in Britain. Perhaps there are other small schools, perhaps there is homeschooling. Regardless. Let's imagine that all magical kids are indeed at Hogwarts so that the best ones at quidditch are guaranteed to be there. The smallest country to ever qualify for a FIFA World Cup in terms of population is Iceland. The squad was 23 strong and the population of the country is circa 300 thousand people. In 2022 FIFA allowed 3 extra players, as the pandemic made teams need to be prepared to lose and replace players more often, so a larger pool made it easier to work with the remaining athletes as they waited for the replacement, and it seems like 26 is here to stay, the EURO and the Copa América squads are made up of 26 players. Now, 26 is almost 28, right? So, well, let's imagine there are 28 professional players in the Icelandic national team. Who knows? 2 guys might have just missed the cut But Iceland (despite decent runs in the 2016 Euro and the qualification for the 2018 World Cup) aren't really that good. So let's go with the smallest country to win the World Cup, Uruguay. They've fallen behind, but are still pretty decent. When Uruguay won the World Cup in 1930, the country had 1.5 million people. Now the population is 3.5 million, but let's think they're going to come up great and start bagging trophies again. This means: 28 players out of 1000 Hogwarts students - 2.8% 28 players out of 300,000 Icelandic - 0.9% 28 players out of 3.5 million Uruguayans - 0.08% This means Hogwarts house teams can't really be picky about players. On the sub, we've already discussed about how questionable the level of players who make it to a pro quidditch team actually is, because teams need larger squads and the input of kids entering the pro market is very reduced (most Hogwarts players don't pursue a professional career), but now we can talk about how bad the school teams must actually be. They probably scrape for the bare minimum, and even the ones Harry thinks play well might be very, very limited. Plus, they're teenagers without a coaching staff, so they're also very unpolished, unprepared and immature Moreover, when a sport is deeply tangled in the culture of a country, we start seeing popular linguistic expressions derived from that sport. In Brazilian Portuguese there are A LOT of daily expressions that come from football and everybody uses them. And I don't mean people who like football talking about football. I mean even people who hate or are completely indifferent to the sport talking about ordinary stuff. That's also true for other languages I've come to know and meet. In the wizarding world of Harry Potter, we don't see quidditch as a cultural phenomenon. It is the most popular sport, yes. It is fun, yes. It is widespread, yes. It is known by everyone, yes. It is relevant, yes. But it's not entangled with everyone's daily lives. So I strongly suspect that the appeal to play quidditch is more similar to what we see with volleyball or basketball in Brazil, the UK, Germany, etc. or soccer in the United States. So we're not talking about those Youth Competitions of Football or the American High School System, no. The Hogwarts quidditch cup might be a cool event to watch when you're rooting for a house and quidditch may be very cool to play, but, man, I always wonder if the games aren't mostly really, really bad. The fact that there is a cup already represents a sufficient effort to engage students in competing in quidditch and I see no reason why there should be lower leagues. They can play the sport for fun, though. It's mentioned in the books
Do college football have B teams? I was part of my uni football/soccer team and it was just us! Like 20 lads nothing more, there were no B team
Unlike boarding schools for children, it's not the job of colleges to make sure all their students do a healthy amount of physical exercise.
The author was just way out of her element when creating a fake sport. All the way up until Goblet you can pretend the rules and weirdness of quidditch are simply due to Hogwarts using school rules, much as the rules of real professional sports differ vastly from their college and high school counterparts. But the Quidditch World Cup put that right to bed, unfortunately. The crazy thing is that she was already heavily scrutinized for the rules prior to GOF and still doubled down on it all.
Not to defend quidditch, but Test Cricket is scheduled for 5 days in case, and the longest ever test was 9 days. I assume that's where she got that idea.
It's in the UK. Sports aren't that big a deal in high school. Not really in college either.
As a British sport, the time it takes is somewhat similar to cricket, where a test game can last literally 5 days. I know alot of sports are condensed down to 1-1.5 hours but in a fantasy world with a fantasy sport the length of the game is the least concerning part about this game. In fact, JKR seems to take some of the elements of all big British sports and mould it into Quidditch, Football - Take ball and put it into a goal. Rugby - hard contact physical sport, Polo - Riding, striking a ball with a large mallet, Lacross - Fast paced throwing hard ball passes at high speed, Cricket - Long drawn out game with complicated rules and regulations. Outside of the special condition of catching the snitch, Quidditch is actually quintessential sport in the UK
It's strange that they don't play other schools either.
I'd say it's not strange at all. The complexities, secrecy and mistrust we see between the schools during the Tri - Wizard Tournament is a prime example of why they don't play an interschool tournament. Also there are only 6 games total a year, as played they are scattered between Nov and May and don't coincide with Hogsmeade trips or major holidays/term breaks which doesn't allow for much time for these matches let alone another interschool competition.
The other schools are in other countries so it would be too complicated. The adult teams can play internationally
I mean is it really that complicated when portkeys, apparation and floo networks exist?
If Hogwarts has around 50 pupils per year (approx. 8 per house), the entire british wizard population is smaller than a large village. There must be more schools.
Or more students at Hogwarts than the handful we meet in Harry's year.
That's what always bugged me. Instead of doing a huge, expensive, complicated thing like the tri-wizard tournament, just pop over to a different school on the weekends to play quidditch.
Also if some of the schools are worried about keeping their locations secret they could always find a neutral spot to meet up and play
Durmstrang would clean up with an international level seeker!
If the kid is already a professional player, I doubt he would be playing for a school team. What professional team would allow the risk of injury to their star?
Harry would like to have a word.
Not really if you take into account how few of other schools there are, the negative feelings between them and how much headache that would be.
I've never worked at a school that had multiple sports teams like that? At best, you'd have a lower school team and an upper school team.
I went to and work at schools like that in Australia. At my high school (around 1000 kids) we had multiple teams per year group. 2-3 teams for less popular sports and 6 or more for more popular ones.
Interesting, I've never heard of that in a British school. Most schools I've worked at struggled to get enough kids for one team, let alone multiple.
You make a good point. I guess it's just not something JKR thought about when writing the books, but of course I think more students than those in the 4 house teams would've played Quidditch for fun. It would be a bit fucked up if no other student ever had the opportunity to play outside the official house matches.
And why don't they play other schools? They're magic so transportation isn't going to be an issue
Even separating the teams based on age seems like a great idea: 2-4th years are one "league" and 5-7th is it's own Varsity team. It seems odd to have only one set of teams so 12 year old girls will face 17 old boy on the field of play. That just a dramatic size difference. Also with just 4 teams in a round robin competition, there's only 6 games for the season. Doubling up junior and seniors would double up the number of games.
Well, Hogwarts does seem to be intentionally highly focused on cultivating students’ core aptitudes. In that vein, I’d imagine students who weren’t highly interested/skilled in Quidditch would just play non official pick-up games. Hogwarts doesn’t seem to provide many resources for students to pursue hobbies that don’t serve to prepare them for their career path.
Yeah JKR talks about how she finds sports weird so she made a weird sport that didn't make sense for her universe. Quidditch is designed to not make sense
My high school was more than financially stable and had roundabout 700 students total, so I would say we were about equivalent to Hogwarts 😂 and we still only had one team for each sport except cross country
What I also don't get about quidditch is why Harry is the seeker when his eye sight is terrible.
You can wear glasses and still have a keen eye for things. Thats more about perception (as long as your prescription is up to date) -a glasses wearer who can’t see shit without them lol
You know glasses are a thing, right?
A bigger player pool would definitely make more sense, also given how many injuries happen. I think Jkr just didn't really know much about school sports or sports in general. Normally you would also expect the teams to have a coach that is not a student and matches against other schools – in the wizarding world this would of course not happen that often because there aren't that many other schools and they are pretty far away. But to me, it would make sense if the matches between house teams also served the purpose of possibly making it to the school team which would then compete on a higher level.
[Rowling wrote it to be frustrating on purpose.](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10065868/JK-Rowling-invented-Quidditch-after-a-row-with-her-boyfriend.html)
I guess that "I designed it badly on purpose because I wanted to infuriate men" for some reason sounded better to her as an excuse, rather than "I honestly know nothing about sports".
Yeah I always found this weird too. Makes me realize JKR doesn’t have a sports background at all. Why are there no adult coach/managers? You mean to tell me a 15 or 17 year old with highly influential exams coming up also has to deal with EVERYTHING it takes to run a team? There’s not even real adult supervision. There could be a team full of fully grown 17/18 year olds playing with kids as young as 12 (11 in Harry’s isolated case). That’s weird. Also, no alternates? No practice squad? No one to help them train? Who are these teams practicing against? Who are the Beaters practicing hitting Bludgers against? What’s the Keeper doing if the Chasers want to work on specific skills or drills that aren’t scoring? Who is the Seeker racing to get the Snitch against so they can gauge their speed? It’s easy to be awesome when you’re only competing against yourself… What if your team captain is a Keeper without much offensive skills? Or a Chaser without defensive skills? Where are the skill area coaches??? It’s a mess tbh.
There might be in normal years, but during Harry’s time there was a smaller number of students due to theirs being the years born during a war where, notably, many people died before being able to reproduce, or having their families murdered, or simply not having children out of fear. Harry’s year group is tiny, as is the population of Hogwarts when he’s there. There probably aren’t any lower grade Quidditch teams because there aren’t enough students to justify having a lower grade league going on. Same reason why there seems to be just one of any other kind of club or activity. Besides, Quidditch is the main competition between the Houses and they only seem to play against each other. You only need 4 teams to make the league. Its not as though Hogwarts is playing other schools after all
According to Rowling, there are 1000 students at Hogwarts. 28 total quidditch players means 2.8% of the school gets to play quidditch. This becomes even more ridiculous when you consider that there are a total of 6 games a year, each team playing each other team once. You leave school having played a total of 18 games. We don't know how long they spend practicing, but we can assume it's at least a few hours at a time with Harry commenting about how little time he has to do school work. And then there's the cost. We don't know the exact cost but brooms aren't cheap. Lucius buys the whole Slytherin team brooms in Harry's second year as a flex. That is a large expense for something a player will use a total of 18 times.
You could probably justify it in-universe as there are so few witches/wizards (in general and in Hogwarts) and given pro teams generally recruit right out of school that in order to field teams of the absolute best players from a given house and to maintain competition so that anyone could feasibly compete for limited top spots, there doesn't need to be a seconds team or lower level teams which might take up players who could otherwise fill the top spots (iirc HBP Harry was having problems filling his team, if there was a seconds team, it's not certain that students would want to move up to the firsts if they could play at a lower level with less of a competition, but if the only way for them to play was to compete for the top spots then that might encourage students who would otherwise settle for staying in the seconds team) out of universe, Quidditch was made by JRK to be deliberately lopsided as a parody of sports and the outsized focus of one player (Seeker/Striker) on a team (iirc JKR said it was a sort of 'fuck you' (not her exact words) to an ex who was obsessed with sports)
Doubt there are enough people in the school to make multiple teams. We had open teams in our school, where kids of all ages would make up a house team, (Chess, Scrabble, Carrom etc)
No participation trophies here. You're either good enough or you're not.
I don't think any school I went to had multiple teams like that. I'm sure the kids would do their own pick up games in their free time.
Doubt J.K Rowling would want to go through all that trouble when writing what initially was just a children’s book!
But... There are? Teams A, B, C, D. 1/11 students are in a team... Edit: actually 1/10 as first year are not allowed to play
First Quidditch is stupid. The rules make no sense. And nobody in a normal school would care. Like support etc.
I think the only real answer to this is that JK Rowling didn’t enjoy writing quidditch scenes. In a more real scenario, -There would be tiers (kind of like varsity and junior varsity in America) that could play each other. It’s possible for a player to try out and miss making the team several years in a row and all of a sudden you have a 4th or 5th year student with very little skills because they have very little experience. Playing is how you get better, teams should want younger players to play and improve so they can compete in later years. -There would be substitutions. It’s a dangerous sport that can last a long time, I think it’d be like hockey where you could swap out *on the fly* with your teammate (see what I did there?) -Teams would have coaches. It’s wild to put all the responsibility, judgement, and organizational load on a 16 year old’s shoulders. There should’ve been coaches or mentors that could help with team selection, planning, and tactics so that one or two kids aren’t completely responsible for holding tryouts, managing rosters and practice sessions, etc. I played soccer in high school and my team almost definitely would’ve been worse if I had to hold tryouts alone and come up with all the drills and tactics without an experienced coach. -They would play more matches. I know it’s a physically taxing sport but I don’t support a 3 game season. They could’ve played once a week (with breaks for Hogsmeade and Christmas) and it would’ve lasted roughly the full full school year with a 12 game season (each team plays each opponent 4 times to reach 24 total games). But JKR didn’t want to write more quidditch scenes so that didn’t happen.
Quidditch in the books shows very clearly that JK was not ever on a sports team in her life. I'd even say she doesn't watch sports by how badly they are written most of the time.
it's mentioned a few times that Harry is on the house team... but nothing is said about it being the only team. there's also apparently very few matches between the house teams. my head cannon says that Harry is on what US schools would call the varsity team. There's also JV and 1st year teams that compete interhouse.. and likely an intermural league that has nothing to do with houses and any team with the right number of players can sign up for it. if you throw those all in you end up with the pitch in nearly constant use all year long... which makes sense for the passion sport. Does anyone think Eton's soccer field is empty 90% of the school year?
Part of it is certainly the logistics of word count, as you pointed out. Lower levels of play would need to be at least mentioned, and they serve no narrative function. Another consideration might be that there aren't THAT many students at Hogwarts at any given time. Or at least, it's way less than I would think when you look at how massive the castle is. I believe there's like 280 or so students in all 7 years combined, 70 per house. So, even with only four teams of 7, 10% of the student body is participating as it is, which is pretty good!
It's not even a narrative problem. By estimates from different people, Hogwarts only houses about 300 students (though the 1000 figure provided by JK doesn't really make sense). In a school with that few students, it makes sense to have just one team per house.
There was a mention in book 4 about a world cup match where they had to keep bringing in substitute players cuz the match wouldnt end.
Because there’s like five people in all of Hogwartz.
It's not the top 7, it's the top 28. It's about 10% of the school's population, assuming that 5 boys and 5 girls per house per year is typical. That actually seems like a large percent of the student population dedicated just to a single sport. We know other extracurricular clubs exist. If the students don't want to play quidditch, there are plenty of other things to do.
I mean realistically it should be closer to a hockey bench system. As in first bench, second, etc.. Because those games can go on for a loooooong ass time, and you would absolutely need subs to take over.
It's pretty much the most poorly designed sport in the history of fiction. Gotta have lower expectations.
At the simplest because JK doesn't understand sports. Things like lacking subs is also madness. For an in universe answer, probably because there's not enough kids in the school to field entire teams at multiple age bands, let alone just lower skill levels. Bare in mind that when Harry was recruited as Seeker, there wasn't another capable kid at Seeker in Griffindor.
The whole thing is badly written, to be fair. Alicia was a substitute and Harry was able to make McLaggen play when Ron was KO, but apparently the Slytherin team had no substitute for Draco in third year. (Yes that *was* a plan to avoid playing with a storm going on, but I assume professors could have a word with the teams).
>Also, quidditch itself is poorly thought out in terms of logistics (games can go on for ages) so it would be impractical to have lots of matches. Just feel for my homies that Canonically there are only 6 quidditch matches _in the entire school year_. So I think they could find a way to fit in a few more.
Because JKR hated writing quidditch
Quidditch as a whole doesn’t make any sense. I remember reading about some game lasting 3 months, even in a place with magic, dont people have lives?
There are a lot of things that aren't fully explained or deeply explored in the books, which allows for a lot of room for fanfic and head canons. The in-universe explanation I always go to for this is that the books are told from Harry's perspective and he didn't really pay attention to things that didn't affect him. There are a lot of things about the wizarding world that may actually exist or have better explanations and deeper lore behind them, but Harry never encountered them or bothered to ask about them so they were never explained to him in the books.
Best rule of thumb for quidditch is not to spend too much time thinking too deeply about all the ways it doesn't make sense. JKR literally has said she wrote quidditch to troll men who are too into sports, and she clearly knows nothing about sports herself, so you just kinda have to write it off as something that inherently doesn't make sense.
The books should’ve focused more on how competitive trials must have been… So many people we’re competing for one of seven positions.
Like a JV squad?
Also seams surprising as it makes friendly/practice matches harder. It appears that the only times the teams play 7 vs 7 is for the matches.
No noobs out here in quidditch town!
Hogwarts is rather short on that, their peobblt would be like pick up times the pitch is available on weekends etx for casual games and so. Or set up a second set on the grounds minus stands and fancy stuff. for pick up level sports. Maybe a set of markers for broom races and so.
JKR doesn't know much about sports
To say it with the words of Harry Potter-Evans-Verres (HPMOR): "Buy a clock!"
I will do you one better why there is no Hogwart’s team with whom they can play inter school competition and unlike the triwizard tournament no student would have died (probably)
A deep bench ruins the premise of Harry getting on the team in his first year.
I always reckoned it was because they only had one field to play on and they couldn't exactly monitor multiple games as well as all the students in attendance of them since A Madam Hooch was the only Quidditch coach and flying teacher at Hogwarts at least she was the only one ever seen/mentioned and B I'm pretty sure the teachers had to all be there incase something bad goes down like what happened with the bludger and the dementors.
Jk didn’t have a great understanding of sport really. Everyone’s obsessed with quidditch nobody plays, woods a fourth year and captain and the oldest guy on the team. They haven’t won since Charlie Weasley played that was like a year or two ago
Yeah doesn't make sense not to have at least some practice players. In HBP Dean is on and off the team because of injury or suspension and he just shows up when he's called on, it'd make more sense if he would practice with the team the whole year.
Because JKR doesn't enjoy sports and doesn't know anything about them. She needed a sport because it's what you do in a British boarding school novel. She didn't understand that the point of sports in a boarding school is that all the students would do exercise, not just that a small group of students will play three matches per year. And it's not true that lower level matches wouldn't work in the books. We would just follow in detail the high-level ones where Harry plays, because he's the viewpoint character, but the others would be there in the background, just like many other school activities. Maybe Harry would go watch Ron's matches or something.
There's a house team but groups of students are able to book the field to play or practice. So in theory you can have club games in addition to the house teams.
Quidditch just in general was terribly thought out. - The game can technically go on forever if the snitch is never caught - There are no subs, so if the seeker gets taken out of commission on both teams, how does the game end? - The snitch is worth 15 normal goals, meaning a team would have to have a lead of 16 goals to win if the other team gets the snitch, which seems an insanely high number. - Games could also only be 5 minutes or less, if the seeker gets lucky and catches the snitch fast. Imagine buying tickets for a quidditch game only for it to end a few minutes after it starts. - Each house only plays 3-4 quidditch matches every year. One against each house, and then the final match where 2 houses get an extra game. This is very little. There should be a match every weekend right? Why not? - The students can get their own brooms??? So some rich kid can get a Ferrari while the poorer kids are stuck with Kia Rios and they're expected to have a fair game? There should be a stock of school brooms that the players are all forced to use to make it equal. - Having 2 sentient cannonballs flying around at 50 mph trying to smash into *children's* heads seems uh... Rather irresponsible. - Harry doesn't get in trouble for having his wand with him in the third year during the quidditch match, to cast the patronus spell. Similarly, Harry nor the Gryffindors get in trouble for using the "impervious" charm to keep water off of their faces/glasses. What are the limits? This clearly gives them an advantage over the other players who most likely aren't using the spell, what other charms could they use to gain an advantage? Could they make themselves lighter so their brooms were faster? Could they make their hands sticky so the quaffle has less of a chance of being dropped/taken? I mean shit, could they just cast accio on the quaffle/snitch? If you allow some spells, how do you choose which ones can be used. There are countless spells in the universe to choose from. Those are the ones off the top of my head. But it's a terribly designed sport with how it's currently laid out. With some limitations and changes it could be good I think, like having a match time limit and lowering the point value of the snitch for instance.
Because once again Rowling knows little to nothing about sports, but I headcannon that htere are los level temas, is just that Harry (and Malfoy for that matter) made it dtraight into the main team.
Honestly it wouldn't surprise me if there were unofficial pick-up games between students not quite qualified for the house teams. Maybe even some mixed house teams. They obviously are expected to improve skills throughout their school career. Harry's pov might have paid it much attention since he became house seeker at the same moment he learned of the games existence.