Welcome to the first underwater hockey report in Flaschenpost, and I'd like to start by thanking everyone who has contributed so far to getting the new group off the ground.

I myself have been playing underwater hockey for 20 years and have represented Great Britain as either player or referee at every World and European Championship between 1998 and 2006. A job with UBS brought me to Zuerich in March 2007 and I arrived full of enthusiasm to start up underwater hockey here and made enquiries with all of the local pools about getting pool time to start up a club. I started up an email newsgroup and sought out every underwater hockey player of any nationality that I could find in Switzerland, and also any Swiss player that I could find anywhere around the world and invited them to join.

I entered a "Switzerland" team for a tournament last September in Parma, Italy, but it was a Switzerland team with a difference. We started off with four players - two Germans from the club in Munich, an American living just over the southern border in Italy and a Brit (me). Before our first game we picked up an Italian from Roma and from the second game onwards two Hungarians and borrowed two additional players from other teams for each of our remaining games. We lost all of our games but did manage to score two goals, the first a great solo effort by our Roman, Marco Santero, and the second a great team effort finished by me. Next step for our tournament participation is to score some points! Oh, and to have a Swiss team that's actually got some Swiss players in it...

Back in Zuerich, things were not looking good, as all of the pools in the area were fully booked every night of the week, so it looked like underwater hockey was not going to get very far, at least not within Switzerland.

However, that all changed late last summer when I was training for a charity swim in the Zuerichsee by swimming the Limmat against the current from Kornhausbruecke to Drahtschmidlisteig. Mathias Dufour happened to be cycling past, saw a guy in full snorkel gear and water polo cap swimming the wrong way up the river, thought "that's such a crazy thing to do, he must be an underwater rugby player" and invited me to join the club.

Martin Reed and Martin Paesold

From the outset, everyone has been really keen to help me to establish an underwater hockey group to add another flavour to the club. Martin Paesold soon joined me and has become instrumental in developing the competitive side of the group. The Freitauchgruppe have joined us on several occasions, which has made for very enjoyable (and competitive!) games, we have already had several visits from players from other clubs and the underwater rugby group are busy sending us family and friends as new recruits. All of a sudden the future looks bright!

(I have also been told that there used to be underwater hockey played in Kloten, but despite asking the staff at Kloten pool, I have been unable to establish contact with them so far. Does anyone have any contacts?)

On 28th February Martin Paesold and Martin Reed joined the Munich team at the annual invitational tournament in Kranj, Slovenia. It was Martin P's first ever tournament and he scored his first ever tournament goal, and this contributed to the best result at this tournament in the Munich club's history. Next tournament is 25th April in Ceske Budejovice, the home of the Czech Budvar beer.

The underwater hockey group trains on Tuesdays and Thursdays at the same times as the underwater rugby group; all welcome!

Martin Reed