We can trace early forms of hockey/lacrosse/hurling/rugby games played by ancient peoples.   3,000 years ago civilizations of Egypt, Persia, Mesopotamia, and Greece played stick and ball games.   Their ball usually made from an animal bladder stuffed with hay, bran, grain or wood and covered with leather would have differed from the Olmecs from the Gulf of Mexico who used a rubber ball and built ball courts.   

Though we may be more familiar with more recent versions played by the First People of North American, the Norse and the French also played organized stick and ball games.  

The Norse, 900 years ago, played a ferocious stick and ball game on ice in harsh climate.  Knattleikr, was an organized team sport of skill and endurance with team captains, referees, penalties, a penalty box and crowds of spectators surrounding a svell or a frozen bumpy pond.   For traction on the ice, the players  used tar to rough up the soles of their footwear.  They used a hard  ball and a stick, bullying and brute strength, wherein wars of words led to serious injuries and even death.  One game could be played from morning to night and tournaments could last two weeks.  The Norse built shelters around the svells and ponds where they lived during the tournaments.   Norse saga-writer Hord Grimkellson says at the time of a game between Sands and Botn, "before dusk, six of the Strand players lay dead, though none on the Botn side"  Apparently Tord Blig was the worst, as he was barred from playing completely due to his "bad temper, even though he was not so strong as to be excluded for that reason".   Another passage from saga tells us that parents are on record complaining about "the blood stained and black beaten state of their sons when coming home from the Games".   

In the traditional aboriginal Canadian version of Lacrosse, each team consisted of about 100 to 1,000 men on a field several miles/kilometers long. These games lasted from sunup to sundown for two to three days straight and were played as part of ceremonial ritual, a kind of symbolic warfare.  The game played a significant role in the community and spiritual life of the First Peoples.   
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Similar to the Norse game Knattleikr and the forerunner of today's lacrosse, basketball and rugby, la choule or soule was a traditional team sport  in France.   The game originated in Normandy.  The game was popular when crowds of people met for religious holidays, Easter and Mardi Gras.  But, the game was so popular that when the people were not busy in the fields they played after church.  Commoners, clergy and nobility took part.  (William the Conqueror played the game  and preferred using a stick and called it la crosse choule.)  

Though there were occasions when several teams played choule, generally two parishes competed against each other.  Rules were not always precise, but they were simple.  The size of the team could vary from 20 to 200 players.  Their playing field was the distance between two villages, which could be kilometres distant from each other.  The game started at the geographical border between the two parishes, which could be a cemetery, castle, cow pasture or meadow.   Each team had a destination, but play did not adhere to defined boundaries.  It made the game interesting because it entailed the players going through fields and forests, over rivers and streams or around marshes and ponds.  

They played with a  ball made from a pig’s bladder and stuffed.  A designated person threw the ball in the air from the midst of a large crowd and the grappling began.  Using sticks, feet or hands the aim of the game was to carry, drive, kick or hurl the ball to advance it toward the designated area where the game could end if the player placed the ball in its designated spot. That spot could be a specific hearth, public fountain or pond.  Maybe it was specified that the ball had to be dunked three times at a spot in the stream.  The opposition did everything possible to intercept the ball or thwart progress in that direction.

Rules may have existed, implied customs may have taken precedence.  But in those times not much was forbidden by the rules, so a game could be one immense scrum intersected by athletic displays of teamwork, running, perceptive passing, astute interceptions, players bumping each other, flinging themselves at their opponents to get the ball.   Covertly smuggling the ball past the opposition was a skill.   In the fight for the ball,  body contact and roughhousing  was allowed; the strongest had the best chance to win any skirmish.  Because there were no real rules and no referee the game was often chaotic and sometimes violent with a high risk of injury.   The game continued without pause – even if many of the players were completely exhausted.  They played until one team placed the soule at the designating winning spot or until sunset when it was too dark to continue, at which point the game could end in a draw, unless they determined that a game might continue another day.      

When dusk was fast approaching, knowing that getting the ball back to their own village before sundown would be unlikely, it was not uncommon  for  spectators or members of the losing team to simply leave the game when the ball was in the vicinity of the  opposing team’s village.  On the other hand most players were reluctant to give up if the game was organized to settle a dispute between neighbouring villages.   Honor was at stake.  It took a major injury to take someone from a game.   

A large crowd, often most of the inhabitants of the villages, gathered to follow the players and cheer their skirmishes, or carry the injured home.