I suspect that no one wrote such a report in the immediate aftermath because we all went on to bologna and then to burla on succesive weekends, which then usurped all the chit chat (that said the burla report only gets to the friday night of a friday-saturday-sunday tournament. I'll have to keep it brief - i may forget many of the details.
before the tournament - some of our players were looking a bit dodge health wise - cian and dave were both coming back from injuries - if they were'n't good we'd only have 4 guys - and my knee was being a little gay too - we needed some pick ups - and we got Max - who turned out to be great. also cian and dave both played the whole weekend - no injury aggravation that i was aware of. the girls however - who i thought we had plenty of, didn't fair so well with injuries. we were already down one player before leaving - jigs collapsed with exhaustion from working too many shifts to allow her to get the few days off she had needed to go to the tournament. She ended up spending her days off recovering in bed. then jo came down with a nasty case of old age on the sunday morning. sj pulled an sj (or some part thereof), but then max got his girlfriend gemma to pick up for a few games too - so we got through to the end alright.
from the start then - i went to grenoble with Pixie and Michéal...via Lyon on friday. so bus to grenoble (where we were welcomed by the native binger, cliodhna), bus to Bourg D'Oisans, some drinking, some chit chat with random american girls on the bus. we get to the venue. it's great. The most beautiful place i've ever played ultimate. we found our other bingers, pitched some tents - went to get some food - bar-b-q and drinks on site. (in fact i didn't leave the venue from friday evening until sunday evening - that's what i like). we drank some more, mingled, played some 21, some english people joined in: it was good. we drank some more (free wine, by the box) - end of what i remember...though i have vague memories of coming back to my tent to find it somehow locked (or perhaps that was me).
saturday morning - we met max. we played Emo. the previous evening had taken it's toll - we dropped alot. and lost. now they were feeling the effects of the party too, but i'm guessing slightly less than we were. I don't think max was too impressed with this team he was picking up with. then we beat yapantonio (milan) and monkey foo (grenoble - host team). monkey foo's speech after this game was made 'as Gaeilge' by Pauline (a full few minutes of better standard irish than many of our team by someone who isn't irish - that hasn't happened before). Kudos to the monkey foo - learning irish is really going to some effort! She went on to make a few official tournament announcements in french,english and then irish. quality. all the europeans looking at each other wondering what language it was...and some of the lads told someone it was swahili
...'REALLY?'
...'NO!...it's irish, but they're really very similar'. :-)
then the last game of the day against Jet Set (a belgian team) - a team some of us had played them before at Dub tournie (that may have been before the formation of the binge - and we got well beaten by them back then - for they were well good). It started quite close - i think - we pulled ahead by a point or two, traded some more - very high standard intense game but still spirited. anyway, games were short, so time went while we were 7-5 up. they needed to score to bring it to cap. they didn't and we won it by 3. creating a 3-way tie at the top of our group (jet set had beaten emo previously). by some reckonings - we'd come out on top on the points difference between the 3 teams. As it turned out they took overall points difference (including the games against monkey foo and yappantonio), so we were 2nd behind jet set and in front of emo.
so saturday night, got our food on and started drinking - Max was there for a while, he didn't look like he approved - i think he had worked out what had gone wrong in our EMO game earlier that day - well anyway, the binge binged none-the-less -though i was still hung over from the previous night. so i faded - about midnight. by all accounts it was good without me. the binge DJ set went down well. and there were antics.
next morning some of the binge were looking a little off colour. we had a prequarter against flyght club from england. despite our poor colour we still won. what with injuries and that we were down to 3 girls (SJ was a casualty of the last game the previous day, and jo had some achilles problem i think)- and i think cliodhna went off feeling sick once or twice - despite that she played virtually the whole game without a turn-over, practice makes perfect i suppose. Flyght club were quite nice about not putting on 4 girls at all. we played a point or 2 with only 6 players on due to our lady situation. we won okay. and everyone was getting over their hangovers.
next up a quater final against the french national co-ed team. what a quality game. it was really close. and really intense. they had a huge squad. if anything it probably didn't help them considering the games weren't all that long - like 40-45 min - or so. when you're used to UK tour 90+min games its not that long. so time went and we scored to make it 6-6, game to 7, with us on D. We got a turn, gave it back and then again - so despite having the disc twice to beat France, we failed and lost 7-6. I don't remember all the details - ciara said we had attracted a little crowd by the end of the game - when it's all that close the adrenaline can cloud the memory. I do remember that i found a state of inner zen happiness at 6 all, game to 7 (though i don't think i realised it at the time - mind is fairly empty in my zen happiness state). then lost it again. hopefully some day i'll find it once more.
so anyway. we heard that on the other side of the draw both EMO and jetset progressed to the semi final. . we finished out against disterics (girona - gotten much better since last i played them) and invalids (a french club) and came 5th. The french national team lost their semi to afrodiziak - who went on to beat jetset in the final. We cheered for jetset - we had played them. they had good spirit.
all in all, my favourite tournament of the year. The place was incredibly beautiful - really nice pitches nestled up in the alps. there was food and wine all included and all in the same place as the fields and our tents. well run tournament and yet still a very relaxed atmosphere, and of course - the team was great - probably the best binge team we ever fielded.
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