22nd May - Paris (France)
Friday 21st May 2010 dawned sunny and hot in Edinburgh. Add ten degrees and Superhands were converging on the leafy Parisian suburb of Gif-Sur-Yvette for the famous Gif tournament. Disaster had already struck though, as we got word from Trev that he had missed his plane after mislaying his passport. Sharing our commiserations and hoping that he would make it out for the rest of the tour to Toulouse, we accepted this great loss to our male number...and imprinted his name several times in the fine book!
We decided to treat ourselves on Friday evening and had booked ourselves into a nearby hotel on the basis that it would probably afford us more sleep than the Gif stadium "gym floor" option! A scenic half hour walk through the two villages and we were treated to the welcome BBQ at the stadium. Despite the murmurings about grown men needing more meat(!) the highlight of evening was doubtless the early discovery that cans of beer were only 1 Euro each. Even golden boy RobLee's strict self-imposed booze ban fell by the wayside when such a fantastic opportunity presented itself and we returned to the hotel several hours later after a very pleasant evening meeting the other teams.
Saturday was a scorcher! One look at Janette's pink bits and sunscreen was liberally applied by all as a handy precursor to the old dropped ball "moisturiser" excuse. Our first match was against School of Ruck. A quick first touchdown came from Freshy after a 2-ball phase and this was swiftly followed by some excellent driving up the wing by LA, Jo and Peter culminating in a 1-ball score from Pierre. Halfway through the game, School of Ruck finally seemed to recover from the night before and stepped up their game to equalise the score to 2-2 on the final whistle.
Next was the Green Army who provided much more of a challenge, but our pace had also increased after a sluggish start in our first game. The opposing side took the lead with an early score which Doug equalised from a 1-ball. There followed several minutes of no scoring with the Green Army completely unable to penetrate our solid defence, with particular mention to Jenny for chasing down a dangerous breakaway runner. It couldn't last for ever though, and we were scored against twice in quick succession, pulling up the score to 2-3 with an impressive 1-ball score (again!) from Pierre.
Our third match against Courant D'Or provided us with our first victory as we really hit form to take on this side-stepping, fast moving French side. A couple of great Roosters provided Ali and Rob with the first two scores which Courant D'Or returned with an extra one on top to take the lead. Not to be left behind, we went back to the "old faithful" Diesel and Rob and Dave both scored to take the final score to 4-3. This was a welcome confidence booster to counter our next match where ultimate winners London Otters completely dominated the field to secure a 10-0 victory.
Revived by food and shade, the afternoon kicked off with our Group 3 (there were 5 groups) semi-final against Geezers. We had control of this game from start to finish with consecutive scores from Rob using a 1-ball and then a scoop (the gloating was unbearable!) and then a 5-ball score from Dunkan. We let one slip through but Pierre finished off the game in style by powering through the Geezers' offside defensive line to make the score 4-1 to us at the final whistle.
The final was against Amsterdam Touch where sadly the reffing denied us the opportunity to derive any advantage from their offside defensive line, scuppering several of our moves (excuses, excuses!). We allowed a few gaps to form in our defence and they jumped at the opportunity securing a 3-1 victory despite a hugely impressive sprint touchdown from Janette that saw her running most of the length of the pitch.
We had finished 10th out of 20 teams and were pretty pleased with our first ever Paris performance!
Serious sport over, all attention turned to after-party. Dragging our luggage to the stadium gym and discovering both the delights of the "mixed" changing rooms and our error at arriving a night late in term of available gym mats to sleep on, we donned kilts of drastically varying length and headed out to an idyllic fine-awarding session on the sunny pitches, with a live jazz band playing for us (yes really! - can you see that at Peffermill?!). Any disgruntlement at the increase in price of beer to 2 Euros was swiftly allayed by the 10 Euro buckets of wine and we were soon underway, punctuated only by a brief flash of LA's delightful underwear. Suffice to say that things became increasingly hazy after this as we enjoyed the fantastic hospitality of the organisers who had commissioned an army of friends to make delicious food for us and who kept the wine flowing far too freely! Special mention must to go to Janette who KICKED RobLee's a*s in a 60m sprint...not to mention several other male competitors who appeared randomly from the stands! As the sun set, the jazz band was replaced with a DJ and we boogied the night away, culminating in some very dangerous 5am drinking games with the only other team still going, who (surprise, surprise) also hailed from Scotland.
Sunday was all about discovering the delights of the Gif-Sur-Yvette farmer's market and rehydration as we sunbathed in a nearby park all day until it was time for most players to start making their way across France towards Toulouse, while the few who had to return to the UK for work/weddings embarked on the train journey to CDG airport, which was a bit like being hungover inside a moving sauna...
All in all, it was a great weekend of touch and it would have been hard to have experienced better hospitality or to have had more fun!! Huge thanks go to tour organisers Janette and Rob who made sure that we were never hungry, thirsty or without a bed (even if it was with the BBR...!).
Team composition
Women: Jenny, Jo, Freshy, Ali M, LA, Janette
Men: Dunkan, Doug, Pierre, (Captain) Rob, Peter, Dave
Results:
Pool game 1: draw School of Ruck 2-2
Pool game 2: lost to Green Army 2-3
Pool game 3: beat Courant d'R 4-3
Pool game 4: lost to London Otters 0-10
Sheild semi-final: beat Geezers 4-1
Shield final: lost to Amsterdam 1-3