The story thus far...from NZ to St Omer

Day 7 and boy have we got a lot to cover! Mishaps in Paris, one tournament down and New Zealand’s Next Top Model discovered.

After meeting in Bangkok we caught our connecting flight through to Charles De Gaulle airport; Paris, France. Sorting out rental cars and putting roof racks on proved to be difficult and time consuming. The van and pilot vehicle were collected and brought to the team for pick up from the airport, however the local coppers were on our case and we were not allowed to park there long enough to install the roof racks. Gibbo and Liv shot off and sorted it all out off the airport premises, coming back later to pick us up. Boats loaded and bags jammed in every available space we were on the road to find our hotel. What was supposed to be a quick thirty-minute ride to the hotel, a wee tiki tour around all sorts of avenues, roads and alleys in Paris eventually saw us arriving after three hours at the Opera Cadet Hotel. All planned of course! The hotel manager, we will call him Basil for arguments sake, directed us to the car park entrance. After a little bit of analysis we discovered that there was no way in the sam hill that the van with the boats on the roof was going to fit in the underground parking. Off the boats came. We squeezed the van down into the small passageway with the most utmost precision and teamwork. Roof racks coming off one by one as we squeezed under the barrier. Boats neatly stacked away in a spare car park and bags and Paddle Ferns packed in to the lift, we were greeted by Tam in the hotel lobby only to find out that Basil had overbooked the hotel and that there was room for us at another hotel further down the street. With a fairly average trolley stacked high with bags we carried on down to the next block, literally, to the other hotel with only a couple of bags falling off along the way.

Time really got away on us that afternoon leaving no time for a trip to Euro Disney. Instead the team showered and prepared for a trip on the metro to see the Eiffel Tower. Dinner that evening was in a little restaurant near the hotel and off to bed for the lot of us!

Friday morning, packed up and after a quick brekkie down, down, down the stairs in what felt like a dinky basement restaurant we headed back to the airport to collect Tonille. With the GPS, kindly lent to us from Inger and Libby, finally working we had a successful trip to Mechlen, Belgium.
Upon arriving at the lake that the Flanders Cup tournament would be played on we sat down and had a picnic lunch. After lunch we settled down into the large cabin on the side of the lake that would be our home for the next three nights. We hit the water for a light training session to get us back in our boats and moving around after the large amount of traveling we had all just done. Dinner was quite an event, during a long wait for food, the team managed to break one glass, take out the entire Spanish men’s team with a rather large umbrella and examine each player’s eyes with Liv’s camera. With the food still taking a rather long time to come we entertained ourselves with some colouring in pictures that Becks managed to find in the restaurant. Dinner came and for some was good, and for others not so good. It would appear that “kip” is indeed not chicken, but fish! We all ventured back to the cabin and hit the hay to get a good nights sleep for a big day of games the next day.

Up at the crack of dawn, the team wandered sleepily over to the breakfast room to fill the tank for the day. Our first game was at 8am against Espanol. We had a slow start, but managed a 5-2 win. Next up we played Nederland’s B who we convincingly beat 9-1. As the drizzle cleared we were back on the water to play against Belgium. 8-1 the final score. Our last game of the day was against Poland. A disappointing performance saw us only just sneak away with the win 4-3. We were on duty for five games during the day and managed to catch a lot of sun during that time. While nice to get some extra vitamin D, a touch too many of us gained a little bit too much turning into what some would call a very red tomato. During the evening we were served a delicious dinner of chicken, rice and veggies in the same place we had breakfast. Following dinner we settled down to have a good look at our games, which Tam had videoed for us, to figure out what we could do to make us a better team. Before we knew it, it was pushing on half ten and we were all ready for bed. But before we could all go to sleep we had to get our singing voices in tune and we sung a loud Happy Birthday to Becks for her thirtieth birthday. Inspired by Friday night’s dinner entertainment the team gave Becks a colouring in book, some pencils and a pencil sharpener! Becks was set to be entertained for the rest of the tour!

Sunday morning we were up at the crack of dawn again with another 8am game. This game was the first real bench mark test for the Paddle Ferns as we came up against the Great Britain team. We were slow out of the starting blocks getting down by a couple of goals in the first half. We stepped it up in the next phase of play winning the second half, but it wasn’t quite enough with the team losing 2-4. Our last pool game was against Germany under-21. This game provided some great entertainment as two of our players in separate incidents managed to have their arms hugged and pulled at while they held the ball cleanly away from the defending player in the other hand as the refs watched happily letting the game play on! We won the game 5-2. At the end of pool play we were sitting second in our pool, which saw us set to play Germany in the other pool for a spot in the final. The game against Germany didn’t quite go our way with some unforced errors seeing us be defeated 4-1. We had to settle for fighting it out against the Nederland’s for 3rd place. This game was a tightly fought match going into to two periods of sudden death. We had a couple of very unlucky shots that hit the bar and as a result we headed into a penalty shoot out to decide the winner. The Nederland’s got the upper hand on us and went on to win the bronze medal by one goal. Everyone retired to the cabins to chillax until dinner was ready for us. We dined in a big yellow tent with the competition organizers. Beer seemed to be the only thing being consumed here, but we managed to persuade them to give us a non-alcoholic beverage. As more alcohol was consumed by the organizers they managed to persuade us to do a ladies haka for them. After a quick practice outside the tent we came back to find they had rearranged all the chairs and set up a stage for our performance. Megan opened us up with a spine tingling haere mai chant and then we kicked into our haka causing tears in some of the audiences’ eyes. We followed this up with a very loud, and slightly out of tune Maori version of the New Zealand national anthem. Peter jumped up on the table and presented us with a poem he had written about the support we had from, what he called, ‘our’ Belgium team. They want us to remember them when we are standing on the podium in Canada. As if they hadn’t spoilt us enough with their generous meals and drinks they gave us all a Flanders Cup tee shirt too.

Monday saw us off early out for a run and over to brekkie with some very hung over tournament organizers. Before we know it we’re on the road again back to France to train in St Omer for three days.

The GPS took us on a fun wee tiki tour in St Omer, but soon enough we found our way to the club. It was awesome to find two well set up pitches on what appears to be old public baths. The club is very nice and spacious with a lovely breeze flowing through the sliding doors. A few of us opted to sleep in tents on the grass for a little added entertainment. We all jumped on the water for a training session before finishing up with some more video analysis and then bed.

Tuesday morning we had a busy day planned. Tam got creative with the white board and like Mother Goose had us extremely organized with lists of things we had to do before we had to get on the water. We completed two good sessions on the water during the day. We discovered New Zealand’s next top model when Megan entertained the team by strutting her stuff by the lake in her bikini and Liv’s high heels. In the evening we were welcomed to St Omer by the club chairman. He presented our team with some gifts and we presented the St Omer Club with some silver fern pins. The French press was present and took a photo of our team, followed by a large group photo with some of the members of the club and the Paddle Ferns. Tonight they are putting a BBQ on for us and it’s a perfect night for such an occasion with the sun beating down a nice 30+ degrees. We are staying at St Omer until Thursday when we will pack up camp and head to England to compete at Hull.

More news when it happens!