Bologna 2008

Last weekend saw 14 Broccoli players travel to compete against some of Europe's biggest clubs in the return of the once annual tournament in Bologna. 7 players flew out first thing Friday for a days acclimatisation which involved drinking by 1pm, bottles of Jagermeister for €10, picking up and scaring off Danish and Aussies alike and even a friendly brush with the law. The second 7 players arrived at 3am on Saturday morning following a later flight to Pisa and a 2 and a half hour drive in a Ford Galaxy, hitting 185km/hr en route.

The Bologna TD (Matteo) made the decision to divide the tournaments 14 teams into three peer pools. We were seeded 4th and found ourselves in the daunting 'Gold Pool' with Cota Rica, CUS Bologna and the Swiss team, Freespeed. After a lie-in we faced Bologna on a pitch best described as a thin and long dust bowl. The sun was up and the ground was sandy and hard with little or no space to warm up but we began the game in high spirits. The game started with both teams running hard, finding space and getting Ds. There were turnovers in each point and from bothe sides, but it seemed that Bologna were the team converting them. Despite all our hard running we were making too many small mistakes and soon found ourselves 4 points down, a defeicit we couldn't recover from even though the second half was a much tighter affair. Final score 12-7.

Next up were Freespeed. This time we were playing on a full size pitch, with grass, but at 1pm. It was ridiculously hot. Freespeed are physical, fast and well drilled and made pretty short work of us. While we fought them for every point they had a very strong D, using physical marks and clever poaches and their O was slick with throws going either side of the mark and breaks being converted at speed. Final score 15-7. Our third and final game of the 'Gold pool' was against Cota Rica. Again we started slowly but there was more room on the pitch than in the first two games. We fought back and the game became a proper dogfight. This was the game that got away on Saturday - the scalp we wanted but didn't take. 15-10 to the old lads.

The final game of the Saturday saw a bizarre situation - a recovery gam that saw 4v5 - the exact same game to be played in the quarterfinal the following morning. Flying Bisch were the opponents and we played out a fast, tough game and snuck it 12-11. We had asked if we could play the quarter there and then but Max has politely declined: 'we have more players arriving tomorrow and we know how you Irish will be on a Sunday morning'. Day one over, we collapsed into the gy, for volleyball, a type of wall ball (not the wall ball the WUGC players assured us), and other stuff before getting on the booze. As we got changed etc. Luan noticed he'd been robbed - passport, phone and wallet all gone. The strange thing - it was all taken from his jeans and there were at least 5 other pairs of equally valuable-filled pockets in the same area. Off to the police station with him while the rest of us tucked into pizzas and Morettis :)

Dinner came and went, and music kicked off. Luan came back and in fariness wasnt moany! Then a Beer Race was announced by Davide and 8 teams took part. Team Broccoli was Marko, Super, Luan and Ciaran. The race was simple...in no way whatsoever! It went like this - run 10 metres jumping a small hurdle in the middle, down a beer while cycling on an exercise bike, spin 10 times, run back to the start (dizzy-jumping hurdle en route), pick up hockey stick and dribble/belt a tenis ball through the hurdle to the bike, put on hocky goalie glove and down a beer in it, 10 spins again and dribble the ball back. Tag in your 2nd player and so on until all 4 have gone. We won our heat and then won the final, during which we laid out, commando rolled and cartwheeled the hirdle, by an entire go - Ciaran came in as their 4th man began :) cue a team rendition of Put 'Em Under Pressure. The night calmed from there with most of us asleep by 1am, no really...

Sunday mornings...even without a hangover getting up at 7am to play frisbee is ridiculous. The sun was hardly up, the picthes were wet with dew and there wasnt a team in sight when we got to our pitch 45mins before our quarter final. By the time 8.30 arrived we were warmed up and ready to play, but unfotunately we didnt turn up. Bisch had picked up a fast Skogs player with big throws and clever d. He made a big difference to their offence and on d he was tough to get anywhere against. That said, we got turns, we had a few runs on the scoreboard and we felt 'in the game' right until the finish. Whatever happened we tunred over too easily during the vital middle of the game and a 4 point run for them all but sealed the game. Deflated and frustrated we went down 15-10, even with the support of Cliodhna on the sideline! Next up were Torring, a Danish team of 10 players. We started well and at 4s felt like we'd kick on and run them into the ground. We didnt though and heads dropped, mistakes crept in and the Danes ran amok. 15-5 in the mst abject performance of the weekend. That result meant back to back 7th/8th place playoff against a team in white full of Italians. They weren't as good as us and despite us commanding the opening half 5-1 we crashed to a 9-8 defeat. Gutted, enough said.

7 of us then legged it to Pisa in the best car ever. Ford Galaxys are AMAZING. 7 other stayed on and drank. I heard they had a sing song in a restaurant and nearly missed their flight. Luan had to trek to Milan and had a nightmare, but we'll leave that one for him to tell, or not! Cota Rica beat FreeSpeed in a tight final, MisscoDisco (with Anna from UCD) lost their final and Freespeed beat us into second place to win Spirit. A fun weekend, and definitely a tournament we'll play again.

MVP -Darragh & Oisin
MSP - Padraig

The squad:
Marko, Oisin, Paul, Dave, Tim, Langer, Luan, Pete, JD, Ciaran, Super, Darragh, Darron and Padraig.

Marko