15TH Kaarst Crash Eagles European Tournament 2/02/07 - 4/02/07

Check out more details from the event at the Crash Eagles website: www.crasheagles.de

The team and our supporters flew out to Dusseldorf on Friday afternoon, we were due to take two lines and two keepers. Unfortunately we lost Shane to illness early on the Friday morning, as he was taken into hospital (Thankfully he’s ok). We also nearly lost another player who will remain anonymous, let’s just call him G, no sorry just Mr Lewis. Grah……..I mean Mr Lewis, cleverly left his passport at home and so had to order a taxi to bring it to the airport, luckily the passport got to us in time for him to fly. He also managed to bring no money or credit cards with him too! …..genius.

So our team consisted of, Justin Beattie, Barry Skene, Joe Erskine, Laurence White, Graham Lewis, Ben Knock, goalie Tom Warner and our two guest players Sonny Brayne & Mike Sheppard our backup goaltender.

1st Group Stage

Friday

Our first game was on Friday night against Culemborg Roadrunners. With all the travelling involved during Friday, we played a very good game and were generally on top for most of the game and had a lot of pressure and shots, but somehow we could not take advantage of our pressure and after some costly error’s we ended up losing the game 3-1. Our goalie Tom, was also knocked out towards the end of the game. Fortunately we had Mike to come in and help us out.

Saturday

It was up early Saturday morning to play against the host team Crash Eagles Kaarst, We knew that we were going to be up against it as Kaarst had four lines of players and were a very good team. Again like Friday’s game we played very well and held a 1-0 lead coming into the second period. With 1.30 remaining in the game the scored was tied at 1-1, but the extra legs and better fitness of the Kaarst team proved vital as they managed to score four unanswered goals to come out 5-1 winners. It was in this game that I tried to argue that a goal could not be scored 2 seconds after the game had finished, clearly I’m not the sharpest knife the kitchen as it was actually scored at 9.02 of the second period, rather than 10.02 as I thought it was……….d’oh! The game finished 5-1 but the score did not reflect how close the game really was.

2^nd Group Stage

Our first game of the second group stage was against the very good Swiss team Bienne Seelanders, although we worked very hard in a physical game and again kept it quite tight until near the end of the game, we were simply outclassed by a better team, they played some really great hockey and ran out comfortable 5-0 winners in the end.

Despite the losses that we had suffered we could still qualify for the quarter finals, if we could just win our final group game against more Swiss opposition, this time it was Roismasson. I was really pleased to see us come out fighting and we had a great game against very good opposition (former European champions and runners up two years ago) but we could not get the extra goal that we needed to take us through to the knockout stages, so we settled for a 2-2 tie, which in itself was a great result.

Saturady Night 'Players Party'

As always the lads were true professionals and made sure they got plenty of liquids in them and got to bed early. When I say liquid’s I mean beer and when I say early I mean early in the morning. However some did go to sleep nice and early, Tom for example was in bed and asleep by 12.00. Unfortunately that’s because he can’t handle his drink very well and had to be carried up by Knocky.

Coming all this way to Germany, usually means one thing, we will definitely play an English team! So who do we have in our last game? Obviously it was against the London Street Warriors. I can honestly say that every single player on our team gave it there all in this game, but we were very tired against a very good team. The Warriors deservedly won 5-1.

Our thanks go out to Crash Eagles Kaarst for organising a very well run and fantastic tournament, which was packed with great hockey. The officiating was also first class, so our thanks also go out to all the referee’s. On a personal note I would like to say well done to everyone on the team, you all worked really hard out there against the top teams in Europe, you should be proud of how you all played. Maybe next time we will have a few more players, and better fitness as the majority of our goals we conceded came in the last two minutes of games. If we do, then the results will definitely be better. Special mentions go to Sonny, who had previously played one senior game in his life before this tournament. Sonny who not long ago turned 15 was fantastic for us. Keep up the hard work Sonny, you will turn out to be a great player if you do. Lastly well done to Mike, who is at the other end of the spectrum at age 75….sorry I mean 58. Well done Mike, you pulled off a great catcher save that will stay with us all forever, let’s hope you continue playing for a few more years yet!

Also I would like to thank everyone who came out to watch us play and cheer us on through every second of every game and who sat there on those benches for twelve hours on Saturday watching hockey. Thank you for your support, it was greatly appreciated by everyone!

Justin ‘Captain S.A.S.H’ Beattie #68