Barcelona. The last tournament of this season. Barcelona sounds like summer, sun, tapas and Sangria.

An adventure- which started when we had to find the right ubahn to the hostel. And then make the non-English speaking lady at the hostel understand that Daire – who booked the rooms for all of us was yet to come and pay. To cut a looong conversation short: We couldn’t convince the old lady that we were no criminals but after diplomatic talks at least we were allowed to leave our bags in the rooms of the girls who already booked in the night before.
So finally we headed out for our first night in lovely warm Barcelona for our first tapas and Sangria.

In the morning – after a loud night (who knew a toilet and a coffee machine could make such noises?) in the luxurious hostel – the girls had some nice breakfast in the cafe at the corner while the lads already played their first match. For organisational reasons the tournament was split up at three pitches on different locations which was a shame cos the girl’s didn’t get to see the boys play and vice versa.
But not only by the weather it promised to be a good tournament – with allegedly the highest number of teams travelling ever – including Marbella’s first ever participation in a European tournament.
The ground where the girl’s played was great with soft grass, a fantastic view over Barcelona and they even provided us with some rather appetizing young men training their muscles. So with these perfect conditions the girls got better and better by each game and once again one could see how far this team will go in time to come. The girls had to fight some seriously tough teams which showed the exceptionally high standard of the European league this year.
For the finals and semi-finals the girls were transported by bus to “..the best bit of grass in Barcelona..” where the boys played at the other end of town. A bit sleepy but nevertheless exited the girl’s joined the boys and soon were to get ready for the match for the third place against Paris. After a long and arduous tournament (the final was only at 7:30!) the girl’s still gave an exceptionally good performance in their last game of the season- cheered by the boys. Paris girls won in a close match – la prochaine fois nous vincherons!!:-)
The Munich lads strengthened the Madrid team – Fair play to you for travelling down and playing for a different team, lads!
Marbella won the Men’s tournament and The Hague won the overall European League.

After a pretty tiring and long day we headed back to our hostel and rested our wounded bodies for a bit before it was time to head off to the evening programme. The meal was held in the super-luxury version of our Irish bars in Munich -the “George Payne” in the heart of Barcelona.
After a long celebration ceremony, a quick raffle and a very nice photo-show the party started.
Over the course of the night, unfortunately, three girls from the Munich team got a bad taste of Barcelona’s criminal potential with their bags and purses being stolen.  As exciting and amazing as Barcelona is- it’s also a dangerous city which attracts a lot of shady people.
After a long, wild night some of us had to catch an early flight, others were able to enjoy one or two extra days in this great city.

All together it was quite an experience and a very special tournament. Thank you all for travelling down and playing for us – The Munich Colmcilles have developed an enormous strength over the last two years and are a serious contender for the European Championship 2007. The only question might be who’ll make it – The boys or the girls?
May the next season see even more improvement than this year and we hope to have you all with us when it starts again!
“We samma? Guad samma!!!”

Marie C. Marcks, P.R.O.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 10th, 2006 at 4:07 pm and is filed under Articles, Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.