Double Delight

One of our greatest days surely. For the first time, the Belgian Ladies won the European Camogie Championship. They defeated the hosts in the final thanks largely to the brave goalkeeping of Sylvia McCarthy in a very tight decider against Zurich. The men had already secured the hurling title and made it ten tournament wins in a row with a controlled final performance as the heavens above Switzerland opened. No-one is quite sure but it must be a record run at this stage.

The weekend started out slightly controversially when at least six of the men's panel broke rank and hit the booze on Friday. I'd be lying if I didn't say I was fairly disgusted as were Martin and Crusher. Without having the luxury of dropping fellas, you just have to grit your teeth and get on with it. To have a blow-up would serve no purpose. If anything though, it probably focused my mind as I knew there would be some inevitable slack that the rest of us would need to pick up. In a sense, it just increased the challenge.

Upon arrival at the hotel we were informed that our room only had one bed. This is a bit of a disaster for me personally as I cannot sleep in the same bed as anybody. Heidi Klum could not even sway me. I was preparing to set up camp on the floor and leave Colin have the bed when he arrived and said Clare and Steph had a spare bed and would swap. For this I am eternally grateful. However, it was all in vain as Colin returned around 3am and proceeded to rock the foundations of the IBIS with his snoring.

Our opponents on the day came in the form of Lux, Paris and Zurich. As always in Zurich the playing surface was absolutely incredible. The pitch was a little narrow but quite long. It was marked out with the 13, 20 etc which is a bit novel over here. The day was a darkened a little by the hanging clouds which seemed to further intensify the stifling dead heat. We went into the ring against the hosts first and they came at us relentlessly. It was intense stuff and they put serious pressure on us every time we even looked at the ball. The 3-9 to 1-5 score line in our favour was extremely flattering but the game was perfect for us as it really woke us up. The only downside was losing forward talisman Eoin Sheanon with a hand injury.

Lux were next up. They have some capable students in their ranks this year but they are missing the core of permanent Lux based lads which they have had in the past. Still, even without them, the team has grown with every tournament. Again, we had a ding dong battle and went point to point for the duration. In the end we scraped through again, 0-7 to 0-5. That made the Paris game a dead rubber from our perspective as we had already qualified. Paris have worked hard this year to get things going down there and they have a core of capable committed lads. On Saturday they were joined by some Lakenheath players to make up the team. It's not easy to travel when you don't have eleven but to their credit, they have done so this year. Their midfield duo of Dave Lennon and Soupy shone as bright as anyone on Saturday. We hit top gear against them on this occasion though and clinched the win.

This left a rematch with Zurich to decide the title. We expected a huge battle and were not disappointed. Martin made some shrewd switches for the final. He moved Fergal from full forward to full back, with Adrian going the other way. Timmy and Jim formed a new midfield partnership with Shane moving to the wing. Ciaran occupied the other wing forward slot and it was his first time pull that led to Michael Hough's first goal. We tacked on two more points and looked like we were cruising. Zurich were full of pride and resilience though and edged back into it slowly but surely. Our defence looked rock solid though and Crusher totally nullified their danger man, in what was one of his finest performances.

Martin, playing in goal, managed the balls superbly!! After a day when they rained in on the neighbour’s garden continuously, there were few balls left in the final minutes. However, when we got a free deep inside our own half late on, he rummaged deep and produced a sparkling new O'Neills. It left me no option but to go for the point. I struck it well and straight. With frees from distance the ball is airborne for a long time and it's hard to judge If you have the distance. At some point though, the players will stop following it in, the keeper rests his hurley on the crossbar and then you know it will drop the right side. It was the insurance score in a 1-9 to 1-5 victory.

We've grinded out our victories this year. The competition is balancing out and we don't have the hunger that others have which is understandable considering our run. Fellas like Shane Ryan and Timmy have been massive in that regard. They only joined up this year so still have the hunger in abundance. Our captain Phil Cushen has it too. He was good when he arrived but he has come on leaps and bounds as a hurler in the last year or two. He was a great choice as captain and a great man to play along side. I watched the DVD 'Ringy' on the train on the way down. The word warrior was used over and over again. It's a great word to label a hurler with and Crusher would wear it well if his current nickname wasn't so good already.

The post-tournament festivities were truly excellent. Often, few teams travel to Zurich but on this occasion there were four in each code. It swelled the party and made for an absolutely fantastic night. A lot of shook bodies surfaced on Sunday morning and headed for the 11h30 train. The resilience was not to be broke and armed with bagfulls of cans, we boarded the choo choo to Brussels. The banter flowed as freely as the beer the whole way back

We rocked into Schuman station some time before 20h and the we marched on for a night cup. Bodies started disappearing after the rousing rendition of ‘We are the champions’. It was a magnificent weekend for the club. There were so many times when we struggled to bring teams to places like Zurich. Now we can bring teams and supporters on the long haul! I said it over and over but it needs to be hammered home. These are the good times, they won’t last forever so savour the day.