That tournament as its name implies, came up with herb winter impressions: all that snow during the day and friday evening made it quite a long ride to Gothenburg. Apparently also unusual weather conditions for Sweden, the authorities were unable to clear the highways. This prolonged our tour to seven hours instead of four. Mads, Jesper, Bille and Daniel were crazy enough to ride a car without both winter tyres and heating; Svend, Mikael, Johnny, Tuf and Kristian went there by bus and Allan had to stand Flying Circus womens gossip, but he was save and warm.
We were pretty reliefed that night, when we realised that the schedule was revised due to the snow trouble and our 8.00 am game was set to 11.00 am. So we could have both some sleep and breakfast in peace and harmony.
It was no surprise then that we defeated both opponents (360 and Frövi) in the pool games. Our gameplay was convincing from the beginning. Svend forced them down with a ‘bärenstarken’ defence layout rightaway in the first point. We could also count on save and fast offence resulting in 12:6 and 13:5, respectively.
Due to the delayed start we had to play the game of last 16 and the quarter final quite late on saturday evening. First, there was Kalmar FK waiting, which we knocked down easily. After that we had time to watch Köln, our next opponent in quarters fighting hard for staying in the tournament. They won their game and had to face us at 8.30 pm. Unfortunetly, we started with a turnover and came behind with 0:2. We could not really find into the game and our offence play was interrupted by unforced errors until we desperately were behind with 4:7. At this point, Köln played effecient in offence and also their defence made us working hard for each point. Nevertheless, we fought back with anger and forced Köln into errors by playing defence ‘lige på fjæset’(?). With a nice high air block we finally compensated the bad beginning by equalising to 10:10 after the time was up. Game was set to 12 and to win we had to get a defence against these attacking colognians. But they did not take any chances and scored to 10:11. Eventually, another misunderstanding in our offence, Köln finished the game converting the turnover into another point to 10:12.
We were greatly disappointed facing a 5th place as most, already on saturday. Especially, our weak play that could not challenge Köln was painful. Additionally, Mads twisted his ankle that bad so he could not continue playing. However, Köln played outstanding and deserved to go on to semi finals.
To get over this unexpected lost, we decided to rock the party and to have shots ‘ad libitum ‘even though our new goal was to secure the 5th place in this tournament. Together with the girls from Flying Circus we had ‘all you can eat’ buffet dinner in a thai restaurant. And we really abused this offer eating a 5 kilogram mixture of meat (pork, beef, chicken), seafood, vegetables, icecream, dressings and fruits, each of us. Quite disgusting, if you consider that you have 15 minutes to finish your dish! Every burp was a hard challenge not to throw up all that shit.
But we went on to the night club, leaving the girls behind us, who preferred to sleep rather than to party with us. But they were facing a final next day, so we accepted their apologies.
A bit shy, because we expected the doormen will beat us, we tried to get access to the club by whispering the given password ‘FRISBEE’. Hitting the bar, we ordered a couple of ‘teeth brusher’, ‘strawberry milk’ and some beers. These shots really helped my stomach to get over that big meal. The evening became more and more hilarious, when some heavyweight, old lady catchers got attracted to and started dancing around us. Apparently,it was the right time to leave the scene.
On sunday, we found back to our strength and defeated superior both Helsinki Ultimate and KFUM Örebro. After all one could say that we deserved the 5th place, even though we were not satisfied with that result, of course. However, we experienced a great tournament with a team forming saturday night party and high level indoor ultimate.
