Having a beer with worn down but cheerful, old, tattooed guys and watching them dance with young, voluptuous girls in tiny lace dresses, while the quilt wearing boys of the band sang ‘WE LOVE THE IRA!’. If we’d lost track of the country we were in, Thursday night at the pub exceeded the stereotype of Ireland I had in mind.
For the third time in NUTS history, we went to Limerick to play the Siege and Erik, Katie, Elgin, Vince, Alex and me had the luxury of exploring recession-struck Ireland in the days before. Elgin drove us through picturesque green hills, along flowing streams and rustic little houses to the stunning cliffs of Moher.
But site seeing wears you out. So getting back to stab city (Limerick has the highest crime rate of all of Ireland), we didn’t exactly shine at the welcome party. Actually, after meeting up with Rogier and Sietse, we all went to bed without welcoming the late shift of our team, Kim, Willemijn, Eelke and Galen. Bad party spirit!
Broccoli
But it paid off. While we were all pretty nervous about playing this die hard-winter-outdoor-open-tournament with four girls, seven boys and Erik as coordinator/side line coach, we totally rocked on Saturday. Three easy wins, with our zone defense driving the opponent into shear panic, confusion, frustration and some bad decisions, despite the beautiful and wind free weather. Playing so well resulted in us playing Broccoli, a serious open team, for our last game. Luckily, they only had eight players and were very tired already. We took a lead and played a solid match. But they were determined to fight back and took the game in the end. Nevertheless, we felt really proud of ourselves. Everyone was totally focused on the games throughout the day and working hard to get open for their team mates. We really played as a team and all individual players made cuts, catches, lay-outs or throws which surprised and energized the other players on the team. It was a great day!
The party was ridiculously crowded and warm, but fun with some nice live music. And we had turtles on our face. And wearing a turtle on your face just makes you feel special and smile all the time.
Getting up at 6.30 am the next day didn’t make us smile. First games at 8, at a 25 minute walk from the hotel. Really?! Anyways.. Elgin mac d-ed himself a Callahan and we schooled our opponent 11 – 3ish. After which there was plenty of time for coffee and Who’s the man, because our next game wasn’t until 2 pm. Sadly, I had to leave before in order to catch the last flight to Amsterdam on Sunday. So, big hugs to my awesome team mates. Not a nice feeling to leave them behind with two games to play and few subs due to some injuries.
So Sietse! How did it end?
Sietse
How it all ended? With two awesome games! These were two games we really had to fight for, and were pretty close. I have to admit that I became a bit nervous as we were heading for the final of the lower pool, playing for a REAL TROPHY! OMG!
The semi-final was one of the greatest games of the tourney, being both exciting and fair. This was actually the first game where we didn’t score the first point if I recall correctly, so tension grew as we were trading points. After a while though, we were on a spree going for the win, having about 6 points on our opponent. However, we were getting tired and the other team actually almost caught up with us. Due to some injurys and Marieke leaving, we were with a small squad with only 2 or 3 subs, so it was tough but we kept fighting. After the hard time-cap though, we were still in front of the other team, so we won! We were on our way to the finals! Well, not really on our way, because the finals were on the same field just 2 minutes after our last game…
May-what?!
And man, that was some heavy stuff. After Galen getting injured (by not eating enough banana’s) we only had 2 subs left. Luckily, we had some very experienced players in our team and most of all, some very powerful girls (playing against a lot of boys), so they kept fighting for the NUTS glory. We played Maynooth, an Irish team wich we won from the day before. However, they seemed to have learned a lot in the mean time, and also magically enlarged their squad with some experienced (rather old looking) players (and where were the girls?), so it was a very close game. We traded points for a while but in the end they were too strong, beating us mainly on stamina. However, it was a fair and very nice game with some very kind and cool Irish people.
We then had to fill in some random forms about who we thought was our best spirited player (Rogier, thanks for the wonderful coaching) and most valuable player (Galen, who just played awesome) and went to the ceremony. Right after that some of us had to leave by bus to get to Dublin so that’s the end of our little Irish adventure! I had a very nice time with a wonderful NUTS team and wonderful opponents. Thanks to you all!
Marieke
Wow, cool story Sietse! You’re so enthousiastic that I feel bummed again about missing out on the last two games!
Sietse
Hehe I’m sorry Marieke, we’ve missed you…
Brit
Sounds like the NUTS glory was well defended!! Great to read
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Rogier
Yeah NUTS! Thanks for the reviews, Marieke & Sietse.