Easter Hockey Tour April 2009

Strawberries Hockey Tournament, Amsterdam, Holland

"Hello I'm Shelley, and I have been designated to write a tour report, I am not quite sure how this happened? Perhaps I lost at a drinking game, or it was discussed and I wasn't there… Anyway here it is, my version of events. Now before I start, I'll let you know that I have been in the club now for 4 years and this is my first hockey tour EVER! Yes I am a tour virgin, and this report is from what I experienced, there maybe bits missing? But the most probable cause of that are the effects of too much drink. Plus what goes on tour stays on tour... right? Here is my attempt in a diary format…. I hope you enjoy…. Scissors" xxx

The tour party consisted of a mixed team with 17 attending from within all 5 teams at both Potters Bar and South Herts clubs. Our tour squad was Ed N, Caroline, Ed W, Owen, Esther, Roy, Chits, Kelly, Clare, James, Steve, Shelley, Rich, Rebecca, Tom, Lorraine and Ian. All of us fashioning a ‘salmon’ coloured kit which was voted for before the tour began. This colour was in fact a baby girl pink shirt! But everyone was quite proud to wear it with matching pink socks.

Friday 10th April 2009 (Good Friday)

We all arrived at London Gatwick airport at 11am to start our 3 night adventure in the country which boasts a gold winning Olympic team. We all had to make sure our kit was under 15 kgs each, which isn’t too bad, but we had to fit our hockey kit and camping equipment into this too. Yes indeed we were going to spend these 3 nights in a tent! However we all successfully managed to keep our kit within the weight constraints and happily made it through a couple of strip searches and into the departure lounge.

This is where pockets of us found bars and started to get to know each other a bit better. The majority of us knew each other already through training, which was held on every Monday night by Ed Newbery at our home ground, so with this in our favour we found it easy to get stuck in. With some of the team modelling pink Kanye West glasses and bellies full of beer we made it onto our flight with no dramas. Except the fact that the shuttle bus to our very small plane was packed full of people with no air!!! James made his presence on the tour with complete strangers laughing at him when he begged the driver to open the doors to the bus, whilst we were all tilting our heads back and gasping for air like funnily enough salmon! We all boarded eventually.

As soon as the flight hit its required altitude we started descending, with a few of us grabbing a much needed snooze before the frolics began. All of us with great expectation of the weekend ahead had grabbed our kit and went to wait for our coach provided by Team Link. Drinking games began at this stage and everyone fashioned smiles on their faces, "I must admit it felt like being a student all over again, it was a good place to be". The coach had missed us, but came back to pick us up to take us to Strawberries. On route James and Ed decided to enlighten the bus with a spot of karaoke while we all tried to spot the odd windmill.

When we arrived we dragged our kit into a designated camp site where the majority of teams had already pitched up. The site was divided into squares and the ground was predominately grass with the odd farm produce! We didn’t waste anytime putting the tents up, with Caroline, Ed N and Rebecca in their mansion, Owen, Rich and Roy in a tent fit for the mountains, Ed W and Chits making a beer den, Tom and Ian in a mud house with leftovers of some forgotten festival? James and Steve in their ‘love’ tent, Kelly, Esther, Clare and Shelley in a 4 man bliss, and Lorraine with her little PINK home. This didn’t take us long and we soon hit the clubhouse and carried on drinking J.

The Strawberries Club House was kitted out for this tour with 6 toilets, communal showers, a place to collect tokens to buy drinks, a bar, a dance floor, plenty of couches, chairs and tables and opposite 3 full size astro turf pitches and one grass pitch. The place was full of both Dutch and English teams, who mainly kept to their squads, but I had a feeling that we were probably the friendliest team their, happily mingling with anyone. At one stage in the night Ed W, Chits, Ian and Shelley got a taxi to nearby Harlem in Amsterdam. We arrived and conveniently found a sex shop and a coffee shop, one of the delights of this country is how relaxed everyone is about these things. So we fit in well. We could not find any open supermarkets but the ‘golden arches’ came to our rescue once again. We then got the whole team some food in order to bring it back to them, as we were all very hungry at this point. The taxi drive back was interesting as the driver did not know where he was going and could not speak Dutch or English??? We saw most of Amsterdam and 3 other hockey clubs before we returned to base camp and started dishing out burgers. The night turned from social drinking to dancing and back again. We all made new friends, and some of the team members got to know each really well without talking!!! Ian and Chits befriended a Dutch team who had a caravan with them kitted out with a bar and disco. It was a great first night and somehow we all found it back to our own tents before daylight arrived.

Saturday 11th April 2009

A very slow start saw us all get up after a cold few hours sleep and nursing heads. Strawberries had provided an old Romany gypsy musical wagon to get us out of bed, and we did by shuffling towards the club house to get breakfast. Breakfast was the normal mainland Europe option of bread, ham and cheese, with no choice of cereal and for some cultural reason yoghurt to pour on the cereal. Everyone was bravely showing smiles, but there was no laughing, not because of the breakfast just excessive amounts of beer we were trying to soak up in our bellies.

We were issued a 2nd tour shirt and told by Ed that our first hockey match was at midday. This gave us all plenty of time to get ready into our hockey stuff, and for some to hit the bar once more. Only 2 or 3 mixed teams had turned up to this event so we had been placed into the men’s league, which consisted of 16 teams both Dutch and English in 3 groups.

Our first was against the University of East Anglia who were wearing an all in black team kit, saw us play everyone except for Lorraine who had a pre-tour injury, and Steve and James who were simply missing? This first game was a little silly but fun, with a Zulu start (where everyone starts in goal and then the goalies are the only ones to run and get the ball on the 50 line). The point of this game was to not score and if you score you must drink beer from the funnel. So we had a good start with a cross from Chits to Shelley to create an open goal, however Shelley did not fancy it and placed the ball wide. This must have scared the opposition as they then came back at us and scored with no funnel in sight? They were a fun team and after their 2nd goal we saw Ed W shoot from the 50 yard line to score with the goal allowed through the shear genius of it. The game ended 2-1 to UEA.

Our second game against a Dutch team called TT Beer wearing and all brown kit, and despite their team name were very serious. These were the team who hosted the caravan party in the campsite but yet were very quiet on the field. James and Steve had returned from a ‘pub poo’ which was very well respected at this time. But this team played their best hockey, and we played for fun so the score line ended in their favour.

In between games Shelley and Esther guested for an all female team Bexley Invicta who arrived from the UK 2 players short. This team were camped next to us and a few members of our squad befriended them and they became great side line allies, cheering us on throughout the tournament, "and buying me drinks in the evening!"

Our third game saw a now very hot and tipsy squad face Sussex who were wearing floral bermuda shorts and no tops. This again was a silly game with both sides having fun, whilst playing on a grass pitch. They beat us in the end, and I believe this team finished top at the end of the weekend.

So our days hockey ended, and we returned to our tents to put our drinking trousers on once more. Some of the team had found a small supermarket down the road and had brought back to camp 2 trolleys stacked with crates of beer. Strawberries provided food and we all waffled down some sort of bizarre Chinese, which went down well and on some tour shirts too. The evening was a fancy dress night with a Holland theme. Some of us were prepared to dress up but everyone ended up fashioning our PINK tour drinking tops, as other teams started to recognise that Potters Bar were the best team in Pink.

Like the night before we played drinking games, and chatted with other players, and we all got more than merry and danced lots! Again we somehow found our tents before the night ended.

Sunday 12th April 2009 (Easter day)

"I was woken up this morning with the strangest birds I have ever heard, I must admit they sounded like screaming women? I then crawled out of bed at around 8am and realised I was the only one awake. I got out the tent in my Bear Suit (selk bag) and saw a member of the strawberries staff placing something under each tent in the campsite. I really thought these were Easter Eggs, but to everyone’s disappointment they were ALARM CLOCKS!"

The alarm clocks worked to our favour because we had our first game within an hour of us getting up. So we all got our breakfast as quickly as we could nursing our sore heads and for some this was simply solved by having another drink.

Our first game was against a Dutch Team on the astro turf called Dun Cow Vagrants where only one of them showed up. So another team jumped in and we played a friendly, therefore the game went in our favour. Steve scored a great goal in this game and everyone was enjoying their hockey. There were a few whispers of "the hockey is now getting in the way of our drinking" but deep down we were all having tonnes of fun.

The next game was not until 2.15pm so we all headed down the road and had either coffees or drinks at the local coffee shop. This slowed the day down for the majority of us and we all had a relaxing giggle with Steve rein acting his wonderful yet rare goal! Everyone else used the much wanted toilet facilities and we then headed back to the clubhouse.

We played our last game on the main astro pitch in front of the club house. This was against the only mixed team we played, Bournemouth, and they were playing in a light blue kit. There was plenty of show boating going on in this one, with Clare making some awesome tackles and Owen keeping strong in defence. Some wingers were too busy taking drinks being offered on the sideline! But as a result we got the goals we needed and triumphed again. This made Sunday our best day and we had to play another game on the grass pitch, for final positions. Unfortunately the team we were due to play did not show up, perhaps we had out drunk them, who knows? But this meant our hockey part of the tour had ended and we used the free pitch to play more drinking games, one in particular was placing a hockey stick to the ground and going round it 10 times, in order the be the first back to the beer crate. My memory recalls Tom winning this, but the funniest was Rich who bowled in from nowhere to get his beer!

We then watched the ladies and men’s finals on the pitch in front of the clubhouse, with 2 UK teams being victorious. Potters Bar placed a respectable 9th position and we were happy to come away in the top 10.

At some point during this period of the day, Ian had a severe drinking accident which involved private parts??? He got much sympathy from the Tour17, and I hope the swelling has now gone down?

The night started early and people were getting into the 3rd and final night of a fab weekend. "I hope I say on behalf of everyone what a wonderful weekend it was and what great friendships I have made both in and out of the club. So the last nights drinking and dancing was the best of them all in my opinion".

Monday 13th April 2009

By the time everyone got out of their tents for the 3rd occasion, we noticed that we were one of the last teams to still have our tents up. The majority of other teams had left early as a few other English teams were driving back home. We were lucky but we weren’t being picked up from the clubhouse until 1pm. So we all packed up our tents and very gratefully ate some toasted cheese sandwiches that Strawberries had made for us, and then headed down to our favourite (but usually the only one open) coffee shop. We all reminisced the weekend that had gone by, noticing small knocks and bruises whilst giggling over the evenings antics.

We were the last team to leave the Strawberries clubhouse and took a very quiet journey in the coach to the airport, where melancholy swept through the air. At the airport Caroline and Ed successfully managed to sort the Easy Jet staff out over our luggage, sports equipment - by ec? Once on the plane home, with hoarse voices and satisfied smiles we all had a snooze.

When we arrived back home we all parted our own separate ways, praising on what a successful weekend it was and hoping we can all go again next year.

Here is a handful of the tour party's responses:

Ed Newbery: "It was unbelievably good fun and I am gutted to be home!! Definitely the best way to spend an Easter weekend and it was so nice to be with such a great bunch of people...Thanks again guys for making it all possible and so much fun."

Roy Hill: "Cheers all for a SMASHING weekend!! You all rock and cant wait for FITF!! "

Esther Strous: "Thanx for awesome brilliant weekend everyone. looking forward to next one".

Richard Hughes: "Thanks for a great Easter weekend. It was a truly horrific yet highly enjoyable holiday and I now can't wait for more of the same at FITF. Hopefully by then I may have at least partially recovered from the state I'm now in!"

Rebecca Partridge: "I had a really really good time and definitely want to go on another tour - just maybe not in 6 weeks time (but who knows)!"

Lorraine Gallagher: "All..... it was AWESOME!!! What a great group we were, I haven't laughed so much in I don't know how long! Won't even start to comment on who what or why.... but just great great FUN. Thank you so much Ed for being the big chief all the way up to and through the tour. You made it happen!!"

Well, that’s about it, if you want to see the tour video then please visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFyUxVgOKBQ and please come next year!