I think we played the Dutch three times in 2000 (correct me if I'm wrong Liam). Once was a warmup game, and then the RR and the playoff that Sven brought up (5th/6th-which we lost).

Firstly, as Nicky correctly illustrated the dutch were friggin huge. Good bunch of guys out of the water, but seriously large.

This seemed to be their tactics. Play some underwater hockey until they managed to get a goal up. Then hold the puck in their own corner until full-time. Nice 'tactic' that. You could watch the game on fast forward and you wouldn't miss a thing. This was done methodically and carefully and with great discipline.

It avoided the rule about players holding it in the corner by periodically moving outside the corner radius (the USA '92 discussion previously). What they did was set up to come out of the corner like an underwater hockey team normally would. The first line of resistance they would barge or fend their way through (like Nicky's diagram). The second line of defense (which was usually me) they would look at and then turn around and swim back into their own corner. Even if there was a whopping great big open goal scoring opportunity -they would ignore it.

Turn, retreat, repeat.

Now these players didn't lack for power or speed. My personal opinion is that we had better skills, but we were much smaller on average, our formation was wrong for the players we had, and some of our players were not as fit as they should have been. The Dutch were capable of playing some very good hockey. But they had been coached out of it.

You can use a similar tactic in Ice Hockey. I think it's called 'cycling'. However in Ice Hockey you can get out of the corner by passing halfway up the court which ain't an option for us. I'm very glad this move is now frowned upon. It was ugly, it was incredably frustrating to play against (because you didn't basically play) and it made boring viewing for any poor schmuck spectators that we will need to attract to grow the sport.

If there are any 2000 Dutch players reading I would love to hear what was going on in your camp that this tactic emerged. What was the after tournament verdict?