Argonauta Tournament 2008 - the analysis

Hey there folks,

Yesterday was the 19th edition of the internationally famous Argonauta Tournament, in Breda, the Netherlands. Held every year on the third Saturday in September, it is probably the best social underwater hockey tournament in Europe. This year the Ladies division was expanded to 8 teams; in addition to the two open divisions of 8 teams this meant the tournament this year was 24 teams strong. To give you an idea of the popularity of this tournament - if you try to enter 2/3 days after the invites go out you are taking a chance that you will miss out.

So... this year a large traffic jam on the motorway leading to Breda from Belgium caused a wee bit of havoc with the scheduling, since a number of teams had players (or the whole team) stuck in the traffic for up to an hour. Games were moved back to start as late as possible, but couldn't prevent some teams being forced to forfeit their first game. The tournament format is a full round robin in your division after which the first and second placed teams play off in a final. Since the whole tournament is played in one day, this means games are restricted to 10 minutes total, with only a 1 minute pause between them.

Argonauta organised a video wall this year - a massive screen in the pool displaying live matches. The video (and water) quality was excellent, so the video coverage appeared to be pretty good - I would be keen to get my hands on a dvd to really have a good look. As usual the organisation went pretty well - even down to the weather being one of the few fine weekends we have had this summer.

Tournament results... I am not sure of the results from all divisions, but I do know what happened in the top open division. After some pretty freakish results at the end of the pool games Fontenay from France were first, and there was a three way tie for second between Once Were Warriors (mixup team of expat Kiwis and guests), Cergy Pontoise (France/Paris) and Barramonda (NL, Rijswijk). Because of the results between the teams, OWW played the final. The final is two halves of 10 minutes each, and at the break OWW were 2-1 up. Then OWW built up the lead in the second half for a 6-2 win. Nice.

The womens was won by the Amazones and the second division by Southsea. Not sure about those results though, sorry. Maybe someone from those teams can add something.

Every year the tournament has a theme for the party. This year the theme was '1001 Nights', so an Arabian nights theme. Argonauta has a clubhouse in the pool complex, and this was dressed up with a desert scene, lounging cushions around a water pipe and various other thingees like a photo wall of last years tournament; the trophies for the winning teams were also waterpipes. The meal that we got outside the pool was shoarma... the only thing that could have been better I think, since there wasn't really enough and the line moved way too slowly. This year the organisers didn't have enough volunteers to cook and dish the food out, so now a caterer was hired in - shame because it was not as good as 'homemade'.

There is some open ground outside the clubhouse, and a big party tent gets set up there very year with music/bar etc. They had promised a surprise this year at 22:00 - and two chappies turned up with fire fire fire. They swung some firey balls around, and some firey sticks... quite entertaining actually. Then they moved on to some fire breathing, and offered to let some people from the crowd watching to have a go. Luckily none of these drunken fools (I am talking about you Eryl) managed to burn themslves, and they all looked like professional carnaval performers...

Once again a great edition of the Argonatua tournament. Book the third Saturday of September 2009 in your agendas for the 20th edition and make sure you are there!

A big thank you to Simon and his team for the organisation - had a great time and appreciate the hard work. If anyone has any photos etc, then please post them.

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Faster than a speeding puck...

Southsea Won the sub-top league. TSW are glad of the mention though. Girls Div was great!

I have one grumble though.

The Womens final was not 30 mins (it was 30 mins for the top and sub top mens div). And most of the game was filmed apart from the exciting last few minutes, when the idiot cameraman decided to film the 1st div men's warm up!!!!!

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but that depends on a suitable reference point.

Oops, thanks for that, I will edit my post above. I knew that it was a team with 'South' in it and when I checked the teamlists I saw TSW. Sorry Southsea!

The finals by the way were 20 minutes, but I had heard that yes. Oops. Hard to believe that they filmed a warm up though, since our warm up was typically sit on the side and talk.

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Faster than a speeding puck...

The tournament was a success once again.
Jols is right when he says it is the best socialising event of the year in Europe.

Great hockey, great party, great people and great weather. Nothing more a player can ask for if you ask me.

Thanks to all the Argonauts for making this happen once again and already looking forward to next year.

By the way, as most people are on facebook here, you'll most likely see a lot of pictures popping up here and there in the upcoming days.