Date: February 18th & 19th 2006
Venue: IT Sligo (way wesht of The Pale)
Weather: Blustery wind making long distance throws tricky.
Last Friday 5 intrepid Brocs took to the road in the Fi-mobile with hope in their hearts, beers in their bellies (and lots more in their bags) and 80s music blaring. The destination was Sligo and the aims to beat Johnny Chimpo, to have as much fun as possible and to sport lycra publicly. In hindsight we didn’t do too bad at all!
On Friday Fi collected us one by one and we exchanged tales of the amazing Frisbee Ball the night before. As soon as we'd collected Adam we hit the road at pace and the banter began. Now, some of you might have travelled in the Fi mobile and some of you might not have. To fill you in, it's a cosy car with character and a pretty driver. It's conducive to intimate, leery and fun discussions and as such whatever’s said in it can't be mentioned outside of it. The trip down was one of those conversations from start to finish! The only thing to be spoken about again all weekend was Fiona's new nickname... FishBox, but we'll get to that later.
Soon enough we arrived at the hostel/B&B, called White Castle. A small, seemingly inviting place run by the slowest, least hospitable Eastern Europeans this side of the dark caves of Slovakia. We booked in (it took the guy honestly 45mins to take money from 5 people), played with the light switch and retired to our room. Valentina was a friendly Italian girl sharing with us and I'm certain she thinks we're all insane. Within minutes we'd invited her to come drinking with us, chanted 'ooh ahh Paul McGrath' at her, told her we were pro Frisbee players, sang 'viva la figga' to her friends and generally been loud and leery. :) She didn’t join us but left smiling.
To the boozer! Skipping food and choosing beer was an inevitable necessity. McGrath’s pub was a saunter away, so off we sauntered and soon found ourselves playing drinking games with Cork and looking at the morning's schedule. First came 10.50am, lovely hurlin. What followed was the Rob Kiely show. He danced, he hugged, he sang , he gyrated and boy did he drink. Fi quickly caught up with car boozers and soon the 5 Brocs were all having amusing adventures all over the gaf. Adam disappeared for an hour looking for a kebab, Luan started a fight on a poor Asian chap in Burger King, I attempted to dance but spent most of my time laughing at Rob. Soon it was time to go home so after some Italia 90 chanting we stumbled home. Rob and Fi went back out for Big Fours (amazing) while myself, Adamski and Luan chilled at the hostel. Valentina came back and God only knows what we said to her. Chips!
Game time...three games were the order of Saturday, all before 2pm leaving the afternoon to eat, booze and be merry. Our first outing was against Sputnix, the Sligo B Team and we ran out 14-1 winners. Fi was the MVP by a mile. She scored a massive 9 of our points and was open all day. We ran hard, played hard and enjoyed every second of it. The water-spitting team call was key, good work Captain Kiely. Next up after a break were Captain Drinking Binge. They had a very strong line with Col, Seamus, Micheal and co all putting it to us. However, after a slow start we kicked into gear and won 10-4. Fi again had a massive game, scoring at will and catching all sorts of swill. Luan and Adam were beginning to come into their own too. The final game of day was against the much-fancied Ballyroan Bombers, a strong team made up of Pen15ers lead by Mick and the Hag and helped by Tommy, Parksy and 2 new players. Their tactics were simple. Isolate Mick, hammer to him then throw anything to the Hag. It work 6 times for them. Haggis pulled down some huge throws and played excellently but our hard running and safer throws allowed us to edge it 8-6. Luan shone in a tough game with 3 vital point blocks (one on his own endzone line) and consistently accurate hammers. Kiely's steady throws were also key in edging through as group winners.
After the game we chilled at the Hall for a while and watched the Chimps stumble through their group. They narrowly defeated UCD 8-7 in the final game of the day. Niall and Softy were unstoppable with both of them showing how dangerous they are with and without the disc. Back to White Castle to shower and then eat at the amazing Four Lanterns. Big 4 Burgers all round, an offy stop in the 'no beer in fridges' Tesco and pre-going out beers whilst dressing in lycra. At this stage Valentina had no idea what was going on. She was goaded into posing for a photo with Adam in a pink tutu. She was asked to pull our fingers so we could fart. She was addressed as Frenchy and spoken to in Spanish. We informed her as often as possible of our love for 'la figga' and tried to get her drunk. Adam even propositioned her for drunk sex when he got home later but she said no, at least to him anyway ;) Soon, we were drunk and the costumes looked predictably funny, tight and colourful so we hit the road.
The party was in the pub with the huge wheel on it and when we arrived in our lycra, into a pub full of normally dressed Sligonians, it was obvious banter would be at a premium. The following are my memories - Tigger entertaining a Hen Party, playing doubles tennis without rackets or balls with Shifty, Naomi and Dom. Jagerbombs. JD & cokes. Fighting Fraser and Shifty with kids golf clubs. Watching people doing the limbo downstairs. Laughing at Kiely being warned by the bouncer to stop throwing Broccoli off the balcony. The many excellent costumes, from horse riders to golfers. Yiv in spandex. Going home to find all sorts of fun waiting for us.
The next day was predictably hungover, but our tired legs were boosted by Brian’s arrival. He'd driven through sunrise from the capital in the Britmobile, all on his own since Ois was overworked back in the big shmoke. Kiitos BBoy. Despite having had a tough group and having finished top of it we still drew a tough quarterfinal against DIT 1 lead by Podge, Shifty, Fraser and Horse. They played hard and fast but in the end we ran out winners by 3 or 4, the score 8-5 I think. The match was scrappy and difficult but we got through to the semis where we expected to meet the Bombers. They capitulated in their quarter though, losing by a few points to the athletic, safe-plying Sligo Bullets. Meanwhile Adam was nursing an injured hip after a huge bid in the last point of the DIT game. We watched JC squeeze past Cork, 6-5 after needing extra time and heard UCD had breezed through to meet them in the other Semi. The final we were gagging far wasn’t far off.
So the Chimps played UCD again and this time defended better and won by 3 or 4. We faced Sligo and it was again a tough, fast paced game with little given. We didn’t play well though and had to fight our hearts out on D as our O was turning over all over the shop. We threw some crazy blades and got away with it despite a strong Sligo performance. Adam battled through his pain and deserved all the accolades, especially after the harshest team call I've ever seen...They lay Adam down, made him fit as much of a fully loaded mystery sandwich as he could into his mouth and then poured fizzy water up his nose. Obviously he nearly puked, choked and was coughing for ages. Fair play to him!!
So, now all we had to do was wait. And wait we did, fecking ages too! Watched some of the placement games and tried to keep warm and focused on the game we were about to play. We spoke about how we'd play, what we'd try and who we'd mark. Eventually it was 4pm and we were on the pitch in a huddle singing Lady In Red. The 8 Chimps were doing their Chimpy thing and then it was game on. The first point was only a teaser of the tough match-ups that were ahead. We turned over then turned them and finally scored. 1-0 to the Green. Then they turned it on...their O was organised and steady. Their D was fast and hard, we never got the room we got in all the other games and we began to tire. They fought everything tooth and nail, and predictably made lots of calls. Not bad ones but a few testy one for good measure. But that shouldn't take away from the fact that they played better than us. Our O was a bit cluttered and tired heads made poor decisions. Fi was huge again, scoring 3 of our 5 points, but in the end the 30 mins was too much and we lost. Broccoli's 2nd final out of 2 tournaments wasn't to be and for the 3rd tine in as many years the Wig of Shame has an orange hue.
On the upside of things, we gave it everything. Literally, there was not one person who didn’t pull out big catches, throw game winning passes of layout on the hard wood over the course of the weekend. The team's Spirit was massive even in the face of aggression. And the fun we had will never be forgotten. To sum it up, was the pain we all felt on Sunday at 4.30pm worth all the effort?? Ohhh sea. :)
MVP - FISHBox (so called because her 'car smelled of old mackerel' and yet every time she moved her legs the smell got that little bit more pungent. Just for the record, Fiona’s Incredibly Smelly Horrible Box = F.I.S.H.Box). Scored loads over the weekend. Good girl, Fi!!!!
MSP - Luan (kept our heads up all weekend) It should also be noted that Luan claims to have drank 45 litres of alcoholic beverage in one sitting. He shall be addressed as “45 Litre Boy” from now on.
Shark - Luan (story to follow at his leisure!)
