A) The shoulder injury may just be in your head, I've been playing for 18 years, I know that a wet old-school all white 18-panel brick Spaulding will end careers. Ouch. Go fly a kite with on that.
B) Waterpolo, pingpong, two of my favorites! It comes down to basic volley-skills, we've all adapted to the new fun yellow ball, we love it, it is pretty and very round, as balls should be, not like the 18-flat paneled cubi-con of the old days, now that is archaic. They are good for one thing, Estero winners’ plaques.
C) Rules have to change, volley popularity was sucking badly ten years ago, and they needed to get in tune with the masses ... television time frames and the FIVB. Was there anything about the old format you didn't care for? Or was it just fine. They should have kept the 3-second rule out of basketball and never created a 3-point line ... how fun would that be... ugh...
1) "Rally Scoring" ..what? …. You are saying that all the mental toughness and stamina are gone from the game, that it is so easy now? Like I barely break a sweat, I go home after I play and jump on my treadmill just to get a friggen workout. Are all the top players out of shape? Is that what you are seeing? A lot less are on 'roids that is for sure. One hour matches? You see that as a problem? CBVA's would last two days, who has two weekend days to burn?
2) In the 'old ball days', maybe no one could afford to put antennae's on the beach net, or probably you and all those 2-hour volley workhorses you used to play with were way too short to reach the top of the net to put an antennae up, so you just left it in your bag along with your stinky knee pads. But you definitely brought out the fluorescent green visor with the brim flipped up... that was a great look!
3) And you've never in your 'old ball' volley career ever clipped the net on a serve. Let me guess, if the ball hit the net these days, you stand straight up and throw your arms out and proclaim, 'this is bs!' and the ball would drop 2'd from your feet. Have you seen the effort it takes to keep one of those bitches in play? Knarly! In side-out scoring, you could wail-away on jump serves and hit it 39 feet out of bounds, but hey, no biggie, you just side out via a deep line pokey on the 92'x92' box on the next serve and you are golden. In rally everything matters, EVERYTHING. It is a very precise, detailed game, you have to limit your errors, and the days of missing 9 serves and still winning are long gone. Whew.
4) see reference to 92'x92' above Mr. old balls.
Your last statement:
‘Also, now VB requires much less: ability/understanding/control/mental toughness/stamina’
made me laugh, I poo’ed myself!
Like I said, EVERYTHING you do on the court matters now, everything is a point, ball control is crucial, precision is key, game strategy is huge, explosive athletic play is required for success!
No more blindly ripping jumpers into a sea of sand, no more lineshots over the friggen net wire, 2” inside the poles, making the court EVEN BIGGER, no more lopsided dorky balls blindly poked into the deep corner where most humans would never even touch it .. ya, you would have to cover more court, but you’d get most of your workout from shagging all those Spaulding’s you never touched.
FACT: Now VB requires a tremendous amount of skill, ability, knowledge of the game, ball control, mental toughness and stamina.