Come to Poland and play in the “Aqua Battle” in Trzebnicki, Poland was the invite on facebook and the Dublin Underwater Hockey team said why not.
For the last few years Ciaran McMullan (Dublin Captain) has been saying that Polish Underwater Hockey is growing at an average of three new teams per year and we had to see if they were up to our challenge.
The competition itself was held in a stainless steel 25 metre by 15 metre pool making it the strangest pool surface I had ever seen. A total of eight Polish teams took on an assortment of Dublin players plus the odd Cork man (William jagoe) and two travelling Ozzies of Irish extraction (Kevin Chisholm and Ron
Phoenix).
We had no idea what to expect and were rudely awaken in our second game when the Walenie team gave us a lesson in the physical pressure game they play to draw 1-1. After a quick team meeting we reorganised our play to win all of our remaining game convincingly with the exception of when we played the Hydra Team which held us out of their goal when the stubbornly defended for the first 5 minutes of our game . We eventually bet them 4-0 but it was hard work. Team Hydra went on to draw 0-0 with their rivals in Poland Team Walenie.
So one draw and seven win put us into the Final as hot favourites against Team Walenie with their two draws and six wins. 20 minutes of open, fast but physical play followed with team Dublin finally breaking their defence and hearts of our Polish hosts with a final score line of 3-0 to Dublin. After twenty
five years playing UWHockey our first club tournament victory has been registered. All that was left to do was retire to the beautiful medieval city of Wroclow to start the party!
