Tourney: European Hard-court Bike Polo Championship - 01/02.08.2009

wicked little film, nice one!

great little film.

Thanks every body!!so good to see you like every time!!
special thanks to Mark and kev ....I want to play again with you!
Thanks to Emilie for his kindness and his hospitality !

LONDON FOR EVER

KISS FROM PARIS
H

Thought you might want to see this;

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/ethicallivingblog/2009/aug/03/bike-polo

i just saw this hugo great capture will, sorry to hugo but this is a great great picture, so much emotion.

i just saw this hugo great capture will, sorry to hugo but this is a great great picture, so much emotion.

ouch.

some highlights....

playing with horatio and hugo.

finishing early in the day saturday so there was plenty of time to drink shitty beer and watch good polo.

ireland/grass representing.

tour de ville party

watching james brown thread the ball at high speed through two bottom brackets.

trying to score against Vidal.

hoxton square.

all the games that Zombie played in the losers' bracket.

monmouth & neil's yard.

those awesome germans. all of them.

refs.

swapping bike/mallet support and STDs with rotten apples.

putting red franklins in the organic ice cream cart.

watching barcelona face down barcelona.

london bridge with a hundred polo players.

playing two games @ downham tonight, both of which went 5-4 (we call that Beer Point where i come from, none of this Golden Goal rubbish).

ray for being a wicked host even though he went to bed instead of drinking whiskey with me right now.

getting another saddle from brooks.

L'Équipe!

inviting myself and a few hundred other people to have winter polo vacations in sicily. catania anyone?

tomasito's shots.

8 x full english breaky with Ray and Hugo and the Rouen crew this morning.

all the organizers, volunteers, sponsors. thanks all of you, wicked jobs.

=====

london, you should all come to paris next weekend or the weekend before the worlds to play some polo. DO IT! see you soon hopefully.

Hi,
Im the goal keeper from "l'equipe"...
Thanks to everybody for everything... all the event was f*cking amazing.
-Critical Mass at the end was like a dream
-play against Rotten Apple
-Shots from James Brown
-Stopping Toros shots-all this match was so intense, with the technical and physical problem at the begining, (thanks to player from R-A who gave his lil' bike to lukas), a clok-game with an olny goal...
-roxy and all the staff, the refferes (good job' i think, between "game on" and " YOU! YES YOU! TAP TWICE!!").
-All the players, talk, laugh, drink, ride.
-Get lost every day in london
-Tom, our "winning tofu curry" cooker, who gave us an house to sleep

I forget so many things, but god, THANKS THANKS THANKS!!!

I hope so much that we can organise a tournament in geneva soon!

Roxy, Mike, Iain and Matt Vidal, you rock.

Without you guys, no EHBPC. Thanks very much for your unstinting efforts. I make Iain my MVP. How did you manage to do all that work in the weeks and months leading up to the event, and still somehow find the energy to play so well?

Awesome.

Is that one of Teenslain's long lost relatives in the background?

*Adds slamm to *the list** ;P

Thought you might want to see this;

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/ethicallivingblog/2009/aug/03/bike-polo

"a French team called l'Equipe Genève won" ??? Ignorant muppet.

Props to Munich Toros, and sorry to them about the dodgy calls in the semi-final against us. I'm sorry it had to be like that.

The refs did do an outstanding job over the weekend. There will always be, i think, one or two dodgy calls in a tourney with 120 games. It sucks being on the winning or loosing side when that happens. It was sketchy, but let's not call it a sham. The refs did the best they could under the high pressure situation.

Does anyone have the final score of the Toros v. Malice game?

I'm really sorry that Toros got booed. Booing is not polo.

On the other hand, Malice would like to thank London for all of your support. It was amazing to play those final games with all the insane noise rooting for Malice. As Todd Cosmic would say, that positive energy was a really big help for us.

Awesome weekend! big thanks to Matt & Ellen for accomadating Blood, Sweat & Beers for the duration, huge shout to to everyone who organised or worked on the event and al the players who travelled from near and far to attend. The event ran like clockwork and was a fine standard to set for next years host....

I've returned to Manchester with about a thousand photos! but will add them to my flickr once i've had a chance to sort thru them.... http://www.flickr.com/photos/pixel_fiddler/sets/72157621816829891/

Has anyone created a Flickr pool for the photos yet...?

If you've got your own photos that you're uploading, please tag them 'ehbpc' so that they're are discoverable here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/ehbpc/

I would like to add my contribution to the reffing discussion (and let's not let this over shadow what everyone acknowledges was an awesome weekend) as having goal-reffed a huge number of games over the weekend I feel qualified to comment.
Calling controversial calls is a nightmare.

All you can do is call it as you see it.

You don't always have a good line of sight and play can be moving super fast. You have to make a decision quickly and you cannot be influenced by the reaction of the crowd and the players. Truth be told I am so glad I didn't have the horrible task of reffing the difficult semi-final. It is obviously good to discuss these things but there should be NO criticism of the refs. It is a thankless task and your decision will always upset somebody and make you the bad guy.
The great spirit in which pretty much all the games were played actually made our jobs a lot easier than they might have been, which is a credit to you all. Big polo love. X

I would like to add my contribution to the reffing discussion (and let's not let this over shadow what everyone acknowledges was an awesome weekend) as having goal-reffed a huge number of games over the weekend I feel qualified to comment.

Let's not forget that reffing like this has NEVER been tried before.

Calling controversial calls is a nightmare.

All you can do is call it as you see it.

You don't always have a good line of sight and play can be moving super fast. You have to make a decision quickly and you cannot be influenced by the reaction of the crowd and the players.

Very difficult when there are 100 people standing within a few metres of you screaming their heads off! I didn't ref the big court on Sunday afternoon, but I did most of the day Saturday, and it was very, very hard to ignore the crowd, and not engage with them. Props to the guys who did ref that court Sunday afternoon, especially Ray.

more photos here
http://www.flickr.com/photos/borntolose/sets/72157621941249294/

Awesome pictues Agata.
Dan speaks my mind as far as reffing goes.
It was one hell of an awesome weekend (even if i was only around on the Sunday).

no ref can make 100% correct calls, but the good ones will stand firm once the call is made.

I know from my own sporting experience that bad calls suck, and that they can sap your spirits. I know I was not perfect but I tried my best.

I will have to start playing polo in order to increase my total court awareness. at the weekend I tried to keep my focus on the ball, and am aware I missed some off ball action - but if I did not see it I cannot call it.

reffing is a very dificult job, even when goal reffing I could only relax briefly when the bal was at the other end of the court.

at the end of the day we probably all made a few bad calls, some more serious in their impact than others. what must be noted is that none of the errors were intentional.

at high level fencing competitions the countries that send above average numbers of players also have to contribute to refs transport costs, so the home country do not supply all the refs.

Aidan, i have some more photos to go, including some of you, but i really have to do them later. So take a peek at that set again some time tomorrow to see more

What a totally brilliant weekend, I’m proud to have been part of it. Massive thanks to everyone involved for volunteering their time and effort over the last months for the love of polo and making such an incredible event happen:

The stewards, either working their asses off cleaning up, selling merch, guiding poo lorries, or having to stand around at a gate for an hour doing nothing.

The refs; the toughest job of the weekend with all the emotion and jeopardy involved, but clearly you are due great respect for the amazing job you did.

Every single player that took part; thank you for coming to London and being part of this, it was amazing to meet so many new players and a pleasure to see the teams we already know and love.

The vodka-drinking mechanic stand (Holloway Cycles) who seemed to patch up most of us at some point.

The people who supported us with their sponsorship, all of whom gave something because in some way they actually get what we do; Andrea at Brooks, Matt, Martin and all at Chunk, Feya at BLB, Arin at Crumpler, the fellas at Shop 14, Tour de Ville, and Fixie INC with their beautiful bikes, Bill, Little John and Moving Target, Fred and Bicycle images, Lauren at Knog, Archie’s Grobags, Carhartt, Halo, Velocity, Bern.

Barry Mason and Southwark Cyclists who had a huge whip round at the last minute and saved our event despite Southwark Council’s best efforts.

The people who did all the little things that are essential; postering and flyering, running errands, lending us stuff, making calls or just taking part in those long difficult meetings many moons ago that helped shape the event; Bill, Ray, Hassan, Matt V, Rik, Horatio, Em, Gabes, Teddy, Claire, Dave T, Todd, John Pique, Kat Jungnickel, Jol (come play polo raised so much cash!), Andy Lockett.

All those people who put in loads of work behind the scenes in various ways; Gabes built and hosted our web site, Andy Lebowski did all our last minute updates, Diego went through many design drafts and stayed up all night before his holiday to finish the player programme, Matt and all at Chunk not only worked to design beautiful merch, they then made it and gave it to us to sell to cover our costs, James Growup, drove over 100 miles this weekend doing pick-ups and deliveries, Ali and Jon made our beautiful scoreboard, Lil made sure we were listed and blogged about everywhere that we wanted, Max with his cheeky/genius trojan trophy, Dov for making our security work … all essential parts of it!

All the people who gave a home to travelling teams, making it easier for them afford the rest of the trip.

V.B. and this forum; for helping us meet and keeping us in touch. Even if it us just to talk shit.

My team mates, JB and Matt Vidal; we stuck to the game plan and it paid off, much love and respect to you both.

Mostly, I want to say thank you to Roxy and Mike for being totally dedicated and incredibly motivated and for working tirelessly to make this happen. You two are amazing, thank you for everything you did.

your welcome iain

You're welcome :)

your welcome iain

... and especially you big guy, having just spent probably an hour in the rain waiting on the fucking toilet collection this morning.

(sorry b, my brain is still fried - there are probably loads of people i missed in my oscar-style speech)

thanks for a sweet weekend of polo everyone to all who was involved in the organization and running and to all the teams nice one

cambridge 2 AKA team cream

+1 thank you all for such an amazing weekend that will be remembered

team cream