Rouen Epiphany 2012

Spring Break attended the third Epiphany tournament recently to experience Rouen bike polo first hand…

The weekend was a complete joy with awesome accommodation (thanks Robin), an excellent court, wonderful people and some of the best evening antics ever. (“Qu’es ce que c’est ? Qu’es ce que c’est !”)

The over-night ferry was slightly brutal, but lots of piping hot coffee kept the drowsiness (and cold) at bay. The throw-ins on Friday were great fun and it was impressive to see so many talented (regional) players in one place, France definitely rolls deep nowadays.

Spring Break had an awful first day where we struggled to ‘click’ and were over-analysing every problem to no avail, we qualified in 14th place and headed to the pub to drown our sorrows. The Saturday evening was a blast and Rouen showed their true community spirit with teams swapping gifts throughout the evening. Bidou acted as an impressive compare and the crowd responded with laughter and cheer.

Spring Break grabbed a few hours sleep and arrived to the court a little bleary-eyed with the chants of the night before still fresh in our minds. Our first game was against Call Me Marmou (Call Me Daddy with Marmou subbing in) and we played very well, marginally being put into the loser’s bracket after a last minute goal.

The day got better and better from this point on. We agreed to avoid talking tactics and played progressively good polo. After snatching some more kip between games we came up against Cocorico and played our game of the tournament. Adam scored some brilliant goals from exciting team movement and we came off court feeling in great shape.

Unfortunately L’Equipe were consistent as ever in the following game and we were put out of the tournament in 4th place!

We didn’t record much of the weekend (as we were too busy having fun), but some travel footage and the goals from the final are below. If you like the tune used, then please buy Django Django’s awesome album as it’s out this week (they’re good friends/neighbours and have been working hard on it).

There was lots of European talent on show in the final games of the tournament and the final itself was very tense with over 5 minutes of “golden goal”, both teams could have taken it, but Hooks proved once again that they’ve been training hard. Hooks! Hooks! Hooks!

See more photos of the tournament on Pierre’e blog. We’ll definitely be visiting Rouen again in the future, it’s a wonderful place.

Update: Some people have been asking to see the final, so here it is (30 minutes)!