Touch Rugby European Championships 2008

Euros 2008. The term conjures up memories of the final on 29.6.2008 where an in-form Spain defeated the German team, with Fernando Torres scoring the all important goal to win one goal to zero. But for the players in the German touch rugby national team, the performance of the German football side merely served as motivation for their own European Championship which was to take place 2 weeks later. Our Euros took place just outside Paris in Massey.

While the touch rugby Euros are not at a standard comparable to the top national games in the world cup, where Australia and New Zealand dominate, the teams nevertheless take this event very seriously. The German squad consisted of three teams, playing in the open mens, open womens and the open mixed competitions respectively. This is still a relatively new novelty sport in Germany, and with the exception of the womens team, most of the players are non-Germans who have been living in Germany for long enough to qualify to play under the special rules for "developing nations" (in the sporting sense). And this is how I came to play for the German mens team.

I will skim over the details here. Suffice to say that the Germans mens team were equal last in their pool with Switzerland. In my view it was really a two tiered competition. There were teams like Wales, England and France who competed in the higher tier with a chance to win the competition, and teams like Germany, Switzerland and Netherlands which did it to gain experience and to participate. Despite the losses, I am very glad to have been involved and to have to chance to play against top teams like Wales and France. (And we should have beaten the Swiss if not for a contentious disallowed touchdown in the last minute!) And we got to swap playing tops and other team gear with the other teams - some were stoked to have received items from the New Zealand academy team!

The women's team fared somewhat better than their male counterparts, securing a semi-final appearance where they were only narrowly beaten.

If there was one unanimous bad memory from the players, it would have to be the dinners. At the capital of fine cuisine, 3-star Michelin restaurants and rich wines, we were served cold dinner boxes with rather sub-standard lumps of meat and suspiciously coloured bits of wobbly deserts. My claim to fame is that I was the only person on the team to have actually finished one of the dinners. Not that I enjoyed it!

A big thanks to Rob, the president of the Touch Deutschland and a fellow Aussie, and all the other organisers, who made this possible.

There's a few too many photos in this album (by Stefan Bruehl) to look through, but if you want to see a few random images from the Euros, you can go here and have a browse anyway:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/koelneransichten/sets/72157606214566631/

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