MOSCOW - In this game, everyone stinks and hogging the ball is to be expected.

Ten squealing, wriggling piglets pushed ¡ª and licked ¡ª a soccer ball around a small caged pen Sunday in what organizers said was Russia's first-ever "pig-ball" championships.

The event, staged as part of an agricultural exhibition on Moscow's outskirts, is set up like soccer, with two teams of five piglets. Instead of goals, the teams try to move the ball into painted, half-circles located at the pen's corners. To move things along, the ball is slathered in mashed carrots.

Whether there's any athletic skill involved ¡ª aside from aggressive licking ¡ª is an open question.

"Why pigs?" asked Nariner Bagmanyan, one of the event's organizers. "It's more interesting and you know, this kind of thing doesn't happen anywhere."