Tourney: WHBPC 2011: Seattle 08-11.09.2011

Kev, I just re-read the posts, there are two instances of generalisations ("North American" and not "Canucks" and "Americans should know their rules"). There's also an instance of a guy who experienced some tricky forearm action from an American when they visited Europe (not a generalisation), that's it after ~200 odd posts...

Fair enough, perhaps there's only a couple of direct mentions like that, but many posts seem to follow from those.

Let's keep things in perspective, we reacted to a "dirty" final and then discussed some forearm and blocking rules/plays, no-one's hating on the Americans... although most people were shocked that CC weren't called on the fouls (and CMD too, although we've experienced how they play at the Euros and felt they were the cleaner team in Mr Do's edit, at that specific angle, etc).

Yeah, i'd say CMD were the cleaner team in this game, but only marginally. That said, they also are the first to get their elbows up, escalating things. Same thing happened in my game against CMD. I got elbowed, went down, got scored on, and responded by delivering a nasty (if legal) shoulder check.

There is no "us and them" in my opinion (home team support/cheers excluded) and I'd hope that everyone agrees the final should have been a cleaner affair (showing the sport at it's finest, being ambassadors, setting an example, etc). Time will tell if it's had an impact on the sport, do you feel it was a "good" final for the development of bike polo..?

As i said above this was the most physical final i've seen in awhile at any tourney. Mr Do captures lots of stuff that should be illegal, some of which the ref probably saw and should have called. Some of which no has never been outlawed, as far as i know (such as purposely directing a fall so that you knock an opponent down, which is still in the realm of "dick move", but not specifically illegal).

I'd probably evaluate the whole tourney's impact rather than the final. I can tell you these two teams didn't make it to the final playing aggressive like this the whole way.

True that maybe we've focussed on the fouls/drama a little (there was loads of sweet polo played in the final after all), but that's bound to happen for the final of Worlds, don't you think?

I think it's bound to happen when you're all so gutted for not being there :-) You missed an amazing event that raised a lot of standards. 2012!!!!