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You will never believer, the time we had in Geneva.
A wondrous domain of smart watches and tolerant motorists , where you can even drink the water from the sewers .
Now gather round your monitors my children and let me tell you the news of our travel to this fabled land .
As God's chosen representatives of the subtle art of Mallet and bike , the Ninja ,Proper-job and i packed our precious sports equiptment into borrowed bike bags and took our chances in an Easyjet 737.We arrived quite late in the evening and hastily assembled our bikes and stashed their bags into lockers at the airport. It was dark and Geneva was throbbing like a wounded generator . The city was alive with disc-wheeled velo-polo combantants hastily crisscrossing its narrow backstreets . Scattered along the lake side like the bejeweled contents of a tarts handbag , Geneva's hot, scented opulence beguiled our innocent, simple fen bound minds . Late and confused, we managed to meet up with a few weary throw in die hards at the courts before almost immediately again setting off in search of precious accommodation . Forty riders, maybe more, trying to look cool whilst legs spinning almost uncontrollably . Weighed down with heavy packs and bristling with mallet handles . Like the Pied Piper of Hamlin, Clement led this happy troupe of children up the hill, blissfully following him into a solid concrete hole in the hillside.Inside we all fell silent ,the bunker was built during a time of fear , so we felt it only natural that we should too . Our fear was for the sweaty trainer ,the snoring goalie and the wind of the bowel .
Morning , and the first day of the tournament . Set in a Disney style school and basket ball courts beside a park and the lakeside , we were humbled and awed by its magnificence . Bike Polo is normally played in the most deprived urban areas , it took ages to find somewhere in Cambridge where we could encounter vandalism and graffiti and the local kids didn't resemble characters from Just William. This was something special .
Everywhere Poloists were mingling , nationalities from all over europe . Different languages , accents and HDPE piping flowed together into a crowd of anticipation . Teams of gladiators ready to pursue the red franklin through flailing 7075 tubing and spinning corroplast . Hardcourt hitting , tarmac skidmarking ,the cities elite . What were we doing here ?
Group stages , we were on last so tried to settle our nerves by watching a few games . It seemed that the games had become faster and pacey , with more and more players chosing freewheels and only the very stubborn played fixed wheel . With 3 courts to chose from , it was hard to choose which game not to see. Everywhere was quality teams . Lots of new cities and teams from last years tournament in London too.Eventually our turn came, and first was a Parisien Team "Marteau" . We adopted our traditional tried and tested game plan . Send out the lefties and i'll sit in goal . Will and Hayden wove their unique brand of Polo , which seems to confound the traditional expectations of what is good . Someone at the tournament remarked on Will's playing style . Explaining that it seems strange that someone obviously playing for the first time should have such an uncanny knack of scoring . Hayden was covering a lot of the court and whipping in shots from the left and we seemed to be doing quite well.
We played the German champions, Polosynthese . Two young chaps and a female perma-goalie, one lefty and one righty who played in channels either side of the court and hit the ball very hard and accurately whilst sprinting towards you. Only 18 years old these young pups seemed like the future of bike polo .Like Hanson on PCP they would destroy you if given the room . We were lucky to get a draw through intimidation , gypsy curses and parking behind their keeper.Find out what happened next.
The 2nd installment will be read at the court tuesday evening .
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Oh, man! I was lovin' the prose... Will there be a write up for those of us from forrrrn parts?
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Bit more drivel
Our next adversaries were the quaintly monikered local Swiss team "Moteurfuckers" , they were like Equipe's evil twin. They looked frightening ,and had already snapped the forks of one of the Polosyntheses boys bikes. Their snarling star player Laurent was in the habit of beating his mallet against the wheel disc in moments of extreme euphoria. This was satisfyingly primordial to watch.
They seemed a lot more subdued when they played us however, prehaps they felt sorry for Wills choice in footwear and delicate handling of the mallet. I even managed a goal . A draw .
We'd played Manchester's ASBO before . The irrepressible Woody was taking the piss out of me for my inactivity in goal. I tried to imagine if i'd met his dad at the Zap club 20 years ago .However I can't actually remember anything of the game. We won .
Finally ( i may have got the order wrong) we had a game with a team made out of misfits and an Australian which was called the A-Team . The preliminary mallet touching and pleasantries over we retreated to our respective ends of the court . The weather was overcast and cool, perfect for playing polo, no squishy balls and sweaty backs.
Another win.
The polo courts were originally basket ball courts which had their baskets removed, the hole replaced by a neat flush plastic cap . Surrounding the playing area was some plastic waist high ice-hockey fencing which was supported with a metal structure on the outside. Apart from dramatically blowing over a couple of times it was pretty much perfect, making a dramatically loud bang whenever someone crashed into it.I got into a few conversations with people over the weekend of their visions of what Polo nirvana would mean to them , Laurent of Moteurfuckers expressed a desire to play a no rules version that meant a goal was a goal however it was achieved. I loved this image of Poloanarchy, and suggested we could do a combination of my fantasy Polo match that would involve aircushions similar to what you have in pinball machines situated round the edge of the court that would shoot the ball out at twice the speed that you fed it in. The logical progression would be to take the pinball thing futher to include multiball and extra levels , heavy metal bands on cherry pickers and pyrotechnics behind the goal .The day's play ended with three wins and two draws , putting us on the top of our group and Hayden the second or third highest scorer of the day .
On the flight out we gave Will a copy of the rules . One of the few contentiously new things included in them stated balljointing had to be followed by a pass which was kind of hard to enforce because some people where using cut outs in the side of their mallets and not getting pulled up on this rule and also for refs working out what angle a push becomes a drag.
The other thing was time outs could be called if your team had possession , not after a goal . This caused a bit of confusion too , not sure why. Also no one on the court heard the refs whistles because everyone was shouting or banging the boards at the side, so the whistle thing didn't really work . We never argued with our refs , not wanting to have any similarity with Wayne Rooney and because we respect authority. All in all i think the refs did the incredibly thankless task well and kept it all flowing .Getting bored yet ?
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More, more, more!!!
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^^^^^^ That was taken first thing on Saturday morning . After about 3 hours kip in the bunker.
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good plan
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Where (yellow gas) pipe dreams are made.
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Obviously you can only buy this MDPE pipe in huge rolls, 25m seems to be the shortest and runs at around £50–£70 depending on who supplies it. Drain Centre on Cowley Road sell it and I'm sure a few other places around the city sell it (suggestions?). Is there anywhere that we might be able to get 'off cuts' or 'samples' from?
Mozo
SuperLuca
deleted
Gabe
Gregory
Bearlegged
actualmatthew
eddie
Taxi-
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About
Cambridge Polo
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@RV’s-Balls
should be down tomorrow, around 1 ish, depending on when i get up.