From the very start of underwater hockey in Switzerland we had heard that there was also a club in Mulhouse, France, that had recently started up, but had never managed to establish contact with them. However, thanks to the intervention of Alex Garcia, a French Canadian living in Basel, not only did we now have contact with the Mulhouse team, but we had also been invited to a tournament!

The "Swiss" team was, as usual, a great coming together of nations, and it was an Australian, a Frenchman, a Colombian, a Brazilian and an Englishman that converged on Piscine de L'Illberg, where the tournament was being held. Sadly our German delegate, Jan Maisenbacher from SLRG Luzern UWR, had to withdraw as his son was taken ill the night before, but we look forward to welcoming him onto a future team.

After a stop at the village shop to stock up on supplies we made our way to the pool where one by one the team members arrived. We were then introduced to the other members of our team, the Mulhouse ladies, who were also only five, so between us we made up a full team of ten. Onward and upward!

Our first game was the usual disorganised affair that befalls every scratch team, and we lost heavily to the host team, the Mulhouse men. One team talk later we had higher hopes for our second game, but these were quickly dashed when only one of the five Mulhouse ladies turned up to start the game. Although those of us that started the game played much better together as a team than we had in the first game, the resulting chaos of the latecomers meant that our second game finished with much the same result as had our first.

However, at this point we were very happy to receive a better offer from the Nancy team, who themselves had arrived with only six players, and so our team switched from being Suisse/Mulhouse to being Suisse/Nancy.

This combination immediately gelled, although not quite well enough to avoid a further defeat in our third game, although this was at the hands of Strasbourg, the eventual winners of the tournament.

Our fourth game was against our former teammates, the Mulhouse ladies, and despite their team being boosted with some additional firepower, we still managed our first victory of the day in what would have been our last game of the day.

However, as we were now playing to Nancy's playing schedule, rather than to the Mulhouse Ladies', we had the bonus of one last game, against our first opponent, the Mulhouse men. Unfortunately, our first victory of the day was also our last, as the Mulhouse men were again too strong for us, even though it was a much closer battle than the first one had been.

We would very much like to thank our hosts for an excellent tournament and look forward to further cooperation with them in the very near future.

Final results:

1-Strasbourg 1
2-Mulhouse 1
3-Strasbourg 2
4-Nancy/Suisse
5-Mulhouse 2

Favio Dominguez (number 4) played for Switzerland

Martin Reed