Greenstone Hook - national team tournament

As Gideon already mentioned in an e-mail, the GSH is taking place in Paris on 21st/22nd July. This year it's not just Germany v France, there are a number of teams coming from all over Europe (Switzerland, Scotland, England over 30's, etc.).

Rob needs to know as soon as possible who wants to go. Please could you post if you want to go, or send us an e-mail at touchmuenchen@googlemail.com. We're not sure how transport is going to work, but you might want to look into flights depending on how many of you want to go. Apparently the pitch is about 30 mins from Orly airport. DBA now fly there so you don't necessarily fly into CDG.

Unfortunately I'm not going to make it as I'll already be sunning myself in the South of France, which is a real shame as this will be the only National competition this year.

Yes, I would like to go to GSH.

Just checked on DBA. A return flight will cost between 140 and 170 Euros, depending on whether you want to return on Sunday night or Monday morning.

I have e-mailed Rob to say that I can play.

Not sure about getting there yet. It is six hours by train to Paris and about the same price as flying (with my BC50) so that is another option.

I want to go as well. I sent an email to Rob saying that I'm interested & available
I try to organise a company meeting in Paris so I'm hopefully getting paid for transport costs.
But I need to look for other options as well.

Sorry, can't do this weekend because my company has imposed an Urlaubssperre until the end of July

Monday will be much better as the party is on Sunday night, if I remember correctly (and I usually have a good memory for the party bits.. )

I'm in... will probably fly.

I will be available and emailed Rob already. Nomis, I also thought about taking a night train. Obviously it leaves around 8.30 at night and arrives in the morning at eleven. Oh, wait, maybe it was the other way round?? will double check..

I shall be reffing this one as it's an ideal opportunity to get amazing feedback from top class refs. I have to fly back on the Sunday evening as Margit is coming with me and the next day is a school day and we're picking up Oscar and Benny from their cousins.!!!

Randy found this one - cheap flights to Paris with Lufthansa. From €131 return depending on when you leave (cheaper on Thursday)

http://www.lufthansa.com/online/portal/lh/...998500&l=en

when i booked isaw some for 89 euros leaving on the 19:05 flight on friday and returning on moday at 11 or 12. If anybody is on the friday evening flight give us a shout as thats the one me and mrs g are doing romance on.

As in his own words "spontaneous sex with kids is bad" anyone flying on the 19:05 should clearly go before boarding as the onboard WC will be occupied!!

Yep will be occupied from 19:05 until I'm done loving my woman. Which means around about 19:10 if I remember correctly.

you reckon you will be that long?

Those flights go to Paris CDG which is on the opposite side of the city to Massy/Orly.

By booking in advance, it is only 49 euros each way in a 4er Liegewagen on the night train. And there is a bit more space than on the plane for anything you might want to do... See http://www.nachtzug.de.

150 eur incl taxes with air berlin to Orly, fly Friday night and back Monday

When does the tournament finish on Sunday afternoon? I'd like to work out which flight I should book.

No idea exactly, but I guess around about 5 or 6 ish...

my flight is around about 21:15. Lufthansa.

Viel Glück und Erfolg den Spielern!!

(and what is wished to the refs? neutral neutrality?)

Also known as Swiss citizenship.

Good luck guys & girls. And have fun.

thanks!! see you all next week.

Allez Les Bleues!

Good luck to the German teams! fingers crossed for you

Oi!

Beat the French. You guys showed how good you can play in Köln now repeat it in Paris. If you can do what I did, when we played the French in Grenoble, a few years back, and break somebodys Collarbone you go up in my estimation! Good luck Guys and Girls and Gideon (Reffing)!

Salop!

Putain de Yorkshireman

Vous, monsieur, êtes un branleur.

I like it.

Tu, Madamoiselle, es un Canard!

Update from Paris is that the girls team won the tournament. The guys didnt win any games unfortunately though and due to points differences from what I can make out Germany didnt win the GSH this year.

Esther was players player for the womens team and Duncan for the guys.

Well done to all and i am sure that one of the players will post full report once they are back - beers are calling this evening as it is the end of tournament party tonight.

Brilliant news for the girls! Congratulations!

I ache. Alot. Incroiable!

Was a great weekend, the girls were just awesome, their experience of playing as a team together, and the experience on the pitch was the killing edge against the other teams. They won every game apart from one, which was the first game and a draw. The guys played just as well, but as a team in rebuilding and with a massive amount of rookies it was a hard struggle for them, and injuries didn't help, but they took it well and truely on the chin, and even better from my discussions with various players they are more inspired and more determind to get things right. The Empire Will Strike Back. France won the GSH by one try basicly. A stunning final watched by everyone. I was stood up with the Gurnsey and Swiss squads and everyone wanted Germany to win! Let the French celebrate, but they better not be planning a permanent place for that trophy in their cabinet.

Must say from all the teams I had to ref (I did 12 matches in two days) the German teams were excellently disciplined, and their game awareness for penalties, turnovers etc was very good. Some teams were diabolical when it came to understanding what a ref had just pinged.

My funniest ref moments.

1) Because France and Gurnsey deceided to wear a white strip, reffing in white was a nightmare. I thank the Gurnesey mixed team winger for throwing me a great pass. I would have scored for you but I was running back into position after a quick ball to ground.

2) Scotland arguing with themselves after I had disallowed a French try against them for a touch and pass. Pure madness and funny. The guy was complaining it was a touch and pass and the girl was trying to calm him down and get hin to undertsand that I had fully undertood the situation and was waiting for them to tap.

3) Chasing an intercept and realising that I was faster than the defender, so slowing down as to not overtake him and piss off his day.

4) The looks on all the Scottish young players as probably the oldest guy in the tournament, the at least 50 year old Nr.11 from Belgium ran rings and a merry dance around them to drive the ball 25 metres forward.

Silliest penalty I had to give goes to the Welsh against the German Guys. Wait till a try is given before kicking the ball back into the middle of the pitch.

Well done everyone!

Oh and Duncs did you get the "2"?

yes he did! well done!!

oh, and great tournament!! I really enjoyed playing. Esther absolutely deserved the award, she was unbelievable (more of this on Sundays, Esther I ). Sorry for the guys but there were so many new players that it was a bit difficult to get the playing together properly.
Quick update on the party (my field of expertise ): as we have proceeded from swapping shirts to swapping skirts/trousers I know now that Mully cannot close the top two buttons of my skirt while Derek fits easily into Lena's (and looks pretty good in it, too). Stefan, a guy from Cologne took about a million pictures so you can probably have a look yourself, soon...
Looking forward to the Bavarian open now...

Well done lasses (Especially Esther! ) and well the guys just need to learn a little bit and maybe watch the girls and learn from them! Obviously we ALL still need to do much but feel when we have people like Donnie on board then we are certainly in Munich going into the right direction. He is a pretty boy of a winger but he also knows his stuff and is a good teacher! Hopefully more Munich guys can afford to go and play for Germany as in my opinion the Munich guys are way ahead of the guys elsewhere-Duncan, Myself, Donnie, Keith , Inflatable Keith, Nick, Nomis, Johannes etc sadly a few couldnt make it this time or in Dons case dont qualify.

As said well done and I will buy the girls who went to Paris a round on Tuesday as a congratulations on how well they played at t´weekend! (Thats the only time i will part wi brass this year!)

Since nobody on the boys team have posted yet I will do so. But first of all, congratulations to the girls who played a great tournament. The guys mostly sat on the sidelines while cheering for the girls, totally amazed by how they can substitute 4 players with a drive to the sub-box, and then keep on doing the same thing COHERENTLY as if they are all telepathic. Bravo. We even suggested that for the mixed game, we played Rob, Derek, and 4 girls. Probably would have won then!

Pre-game:
On saturday morning at 9 a.m. or so we all arrived and met each other. Some we have seen once at the Cologne tournament, and some that we have never met. After a couple of ice breakers we could remember each other's names. Mully was appointed captain. Sasha and Dan from Vienna will sit out both days and Saturday respectively, due to recent injuries. Rob, Derek and Gideon are dedicated refs for the tournament.

Game 1. Guernsey. 2-4
Considering that we have never played together this wasn't a bad result. Guernsey scored almost straight away, and then Dave ran a loop on the wing and scored almost immediately after. Dave dived over for another try later. Both teams were still warming up, and a few defensive errors cost us. Still, an encouraging start. Although it wasn't a factor in the game, the pitch was actually tilted in both directions. So the when Mully came back from the toss, he said, "we're running uphill in the first half".

Game 2: Switzerland. 1-2
For the first game after lunch, we decide to stick to the basics. The Swiss have nothing really special in the pockets, but were solid and pretty quick. We went down 1-0, I got myself one try later, and then were very relieved when a forward pass was called on a Swiss move that came off an intercept. Unfortunately, they went in once more later and we ran out of time to recover.

Training:
After game 1 we decided to go through some basic moves. Dump and split, and 2 pass sweep, just to make sure that everyone was on the same page. We didn't use any of that in the game, and against the Swiss we clearly lacked an attacking option at the line. We decided to work on the 3 man drive and then some gap running at the end of it. A good positive session.

Game 3: France 35. 2-2
We wanted this game. I refed these guys in the previous match so I knew that they were no walk-overs. Not particularly quick but they can drive very efficiently. After a slow start and following behind, we absolutely dominated the second half and had numerous close opportunities, after practically camping at their line. But, our line attack was not good enough and we could only salvage a draw. I can't remember who scored in this one, I think Dave got another one, and also put through either Mike or Mark (one of the twins). Our team was working much better together, and we looked forward to Sunday.

Second Day
Game 4: Wales 35. 1-3
After the draw against France 35 we had high hopes for this. Then Derek told us that the Welsh are a bit grumpy because they've been at the bar all night long, and we thought that we needed to take the chance. But it was not to be. We were playing like the Saturday morning team again, until late in the second half. The Welsh were well drilled, organised, and managed to put pressure on us on the line. Some good moves, and some silly defensive errors from us, cost us dearly. At the end of the game, we were the grumpy bastards, not the Welsh. One positive is that Dan got through the game uninjured, and even ran around their winger and then up half the field to score. Time is running out for getting that elusive win in the tournament.

Game 5: Wales 30. 2-5
The score looks bad, but we were actually happy with our game here. They had some dangerous scooters, namely the Blondie. Luckily not the whole team was that quick, but they were nevertheless a dangerous team. Our defence generally held up well but were outplayed by the quick dump and scoots a few times. We managed a couple on the board too - Dan managed to scoot through as dummy half into the endzone and then give Ian a chance to score, and Mully also sliced through for another. Unfortunately Dan has severely injured his ankle again and is out for the tournament. The other legs in the team are also starting to get tired. Note: Gideon refed this one.

Game 6: France 1-7
We knew that we were not going to win this one, but a low score would have been good for the morale and possibly important for the Greenstone-Hook cup. Gideon said that their defence doesn't retreat quickly enough, but we although we did drive hard and fast we didn't quite manage to get them to falter. They scored within 10 seconds of the opening whistle as well. But after that initial lapse, it was the best game that our inexperienced (not that we're young or anything) Mens team has played. We defended and attacked with intensity, and were justifiably proud to have put Lee over in the corner for his first try in the tournament. The France were the class team of the tournament, and one huge problem for us was that their players could beat some of our players (at least me anyway) one-on-one. But we played like a team and covered for each other. Patrick did some incredible cover defence to sprint across from the far side to chase down a young-un and stop a try, and Duncan and Dave made some sterling chases as well. Mully had an almost-magic moment - he threw a huge dummy and sliced through the French defence, but couldn't pull the ball back into his hands! I think we can build on this one.

Mixed Game vs. France: 4-4
This was the money game, and we had to win it because the guys lost by so many points against the French Men. Rob and Derek came in as the fresh legs, and put some extra structure into our offence. We were going to drive to their line, and they were going to scoot from dummy half, with the ball-roller running hard to the outside. It worked a couple of times, and Matt scored from a fantastic intercept. 3-1 at half time. I can't remember who else scored.
It went downhill a bit from there. We lost our concentration a couple of times, and their quick driving also played a factor in getting them over the line. At 3-3, Derek ran around their winger and sprinted to the touch line for 4-3. Unfortunately they put our line under pressure again and scored from close range, and we ran out of time to answer their question. All in all, it was a tense and entertaining match.

Sasha from Vienna has kindly recorded some videos of some of our matches, including the France vs. Germany Mens match. Hopefully we'll get hold of that some time and have a look at some european international touch matches. I think it will be good for tactics class and goes into the video stash with the other ones that Donnie have posted. I wish all the injured players (especially Dan and Sasha, and Simon with his dodgy ankle also qualifies, as well as some of the gallant girls who were carrying some quite scary looking abrasions) a quick recovery.

Loks cheers for the report - were you taking notes? I would just like to reiterate what you have said. It was obviously very difficult for us having never played together before and I think that on reflection we did about as well as could be expected. Some of the other teams were very well drilled and had obviously played together on a number of occasions prior to the tournament. We were unfortunate not to come away with at least one win in the mens comp and losing the Greenstone Hook on countback still leaves a sour taste in my mouth although the French men deserved to take away the trophy.

I personally learnt a great deal over the course of the weekend in both a leadership capacity and on the tactics front. One of our greatest problems was how to convert pressure into points. If we had been more aware near the opposition line, we would have come away with a better record. We also clearly need more game time together and so everyone (not just MUC) should try and get to national training sessions.

We also need to get enough players for a dedicated mixed team too so that we are able to accumulate points in all of the categories and challenge for the main trophy too. That said we definitely showed the cheese eating surrender monkeys who was boss in the drinking stakes.

I hope that everyone else who was there was able to take some positives away as well and I look forward to seeing two very strong sides lining up for us in August. Am looking forward to coming back to the fold in a few weeks and showing "pretty boy" and the rest of you a clean pair of heels!

Mully

p.s. well done again ladies - fine performance.
p.p.s please can the girls bring some clothes that actually fit the men. Thanks :-)

What more can I say, it was a brilliant and for us girls a very successul weekend. Even though we also had some rookies in our team (Claudi, Kathi and Susi from Frankfurt, Svenja from Cologne and Esther from Vienna) we played together like a team. Although Esther from Vienna didn't know our moves, she learnt them quickly and did a fantastic job. I believe that the advantage of us girls is, that we are much more diciplined than the guys and that we trust each other. May be the guys should listen to the girls more in training as well and learn from our experience

Anyways, here are the results of the girl's games (as far as I can remember them correctly):

1. game vs. France: 2:2
2. game vs. Guernsey: 3:1
3. game vs. France: 3:2
4. game vs. Guernsey: 4:0
5. game vs. France: 4:3
6: game vs. Gurensey: 3:2

Not sure if the result are correct, but the bottom line is we were unbeaten
All the games were pretty tight and were played on a high standard.

See you all tonight,
Esther

Well done girls!!! And well done Esther! Sounds like a great weekend, I'm really sorry I missed it.

Well done!!

Mr Mullender- its easy to create chances. Guess myself and Pretty Boy Don(Key) need to teach you. Sometimes though you cant teach an old dog new tricks!

Well done guys and gals! And I was also very happy to see the tradition of post-tournament transvesticism was kept very much alive.

Well done! Congrats!

(just also discovered the pics at flickr, I like the black/white ones)

Not taking notes, just have a good memory for useless information.

Can someone put a link to the flickr photo's thanks.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/touchdeutschland/

Are these photo's from Lee or Steffan? Has anyone got a link to photo's of the Men's games?

They look like Lee's. because Steffan took millions more and there are none of the guy's matches. Oh and a dress does suit you Mully.

Brilliant news!! Well done chicks xx