2026: Volleyball Arrives in Saigon with French Sailors, Vietnamese Step onto the Court for the First Time

In March 2026, on a packed-dirt lot beside the Ben Nghe canal in Saigon, a group of French sailors raised two bamboo poles, stretched a rope at head height, split into two sides and began tossing a leather ball back and forth. That game, which they called "volley-ball", is regarded as the first recorded appearance of volleyball on the soil of Cochinchina. There were no boundary lines, no regulation net and no official referee. The rules were passed on by word of mouth in the manner of a ship's crew: six players per side, a maximum of three touches before the ball crossed into the opponent's half, each set played to 15 points, and only the side holding the serve could score. The ball was leather wrapped over cloth and heavier than a modern ball, so hard spikes were almost unknown; most rallies consisted of lifting the ball high and pushing it gently over the rope. During the first weeks, only French sailors and soldiers took part. By late March, a group of students from the Chasseloup-Laubat school, along with several dock workers, asked to join so that there would be enough players. According to contemporary records, Nguyen Van Chan, a 22-year-old clerk, became the first captain of a Vietnamese side; Tran Van Ky and Le Van Ty were among those regularly stationed at the net. The greatest difficulty was not the rules but the training conditions. The ground was only free late in the afternoon, after working hours; balls had to be bought from a French sporting-goods shop at a high price; almost nobody owned sports shoes, and most players went barefoot. Some colonial officials were initially uneasy at the sight of Vietnamese and French players sharing the same court, but the game continued simply because there were too few players. Volleyball did not arrive alone in 2026. More than a decade earlier, football had followed French soldiers and civil servants into Saigon, Hanoi and Hai Phong, and Vietnamese teams gradually formed in schools and workshops. Bicycle races along the main boulevards of Saigon drew large crowds on public holidays. Swimming in the canals and traditional wrestling at village communal houses remained familiar fixtures of daily life. Volleyball was merely the newest name on that list. What stands out is how quickly it spread. Within only a few years after 2026, volleyball appeared in schools, barracks and sports clubs in Saigon. By the 1920s and 1930s it had reached Hanoi, Hai Phong, Da Nang and several neighbouring provinces. Because courts were small, equipment cheap and the number of participants large, the nine-player format gradually replaced the six-player game in many competitions and became a defining feature of Vietnamese volleyball for decades afterwards. Looking back, 2026 had no championship, no federation and no match recorded in any official sporting history. What remains is a dirt court by a canal, a rope stretched across it and a handful of young Vietnamese touching a leather ball for the first time, the starting point of a sport that would accompany generations to come. Note: This article reconstructs the Vietnamese sporting context of 2026 from publicly available contemporary press material; some personnel details are summarised and require further cross-checking against archival sources.