Euro Tourney Update

Hey Fellas,

I played Wonderful Copenhagen last weekend. 3 day tourney, 7 matches all up. I was pretty sore warming up on day 3, but that may have had to do with the fact that it was about 5 degrees in the mornings.  Still, once the matches got going I kept running hard till the end. 

We played the Italian national team first up. They had a fair bit of national pride going, but so did I, taking it upon myself to avenge our loss to Italy at the world cup in 06. I think we scored first, and they were a bit worried, but then we got down by 2. After that we traded until the last few points, eventually going down by 4. They moved the disc pretty well, but were pretty reluctant to huck it, and didn’t have any great receivers anyway.

I was chatting to their captain, who was telling me about previous encounters with Aussies at last worlds: “You’re captain, he make handblock on me. But also, at da party, he dance without any pants….”

In between games I got a chance to check out some of our other opposition for Vancouver.

I only saw bits and pieces of Germany, but they had one guy who made a lot of their play happen, their captain ‘No-Neck’. Seriously, he has no neck whatsoever, and would make a great prop for a rugby scrum. They ran feldrunner occasionally, but mostly just a standard offence. They lost in the quarters to a Danish club team, Ragnarok.

The Poms had split their worlds team into offence and defence lines, playing as separate teams with about 12 on each. Their O line won the final over Skogs (Sweden). Their D line lost the semi to Skogs, but they were all still moving well in the final matches, so they’re definitely fit. I’ve got a fair bit of an idea about their default play, something to practice defending against at the next training camp.

I didn’t get much useful info on the Swedes, since they were missing a few key players to injury and despite having a big squad, only seemed to play the final with only 9 or 10 players, one of which was a star French pick up. GB played zone against them to good effect.

Out of all the countries there, the Poms seemed to have the deepest and most capable squad, but then again, others like Sweden and Denmark weren’t there as their national team. I should be able to get my hands on the Euros DVD, so I’ll have a look at that this weekend.

See you all in May

Andrew