Last weekend 3 players of HRC went on trip with the Dutch Lions team to compete against other Touch teams in Europe and from Argentina at Elche.
The players Brad, Peter (Ass. Coach) and Vincent were selected to open the Tournament season abroad in Europe playing Touch together with players from Amsterdam Touch, Lowlanders Touch, London Eagles, Touch Madrid and RRC Touch.
The team departure at Thursday morning to meet each other in Spain having some sight seeing together in Alicante before heading to the AirBnB villa the team stayed over for the weekend. The team did some training based on policy in Subbing on and off the field what the roles are of each position to gather the last confidence in the head and body. And of course, a good barbecue together to bond the team even more closer to each other.
On Friday the Tournament started where the Dutch Lions needed to play 3 games by winning all of them proceeding to the Cup Division, which went successfully as planned as the Dutch Lions was mentioned by the predictions to end up high in the ranking this year.
With respectively wins of 11-0, 14-5 and 9-4 on the first day, the team were in a good position facing the Swiss and Spanish Men’s Open team for a spot in the Final.
The second day the Dutch Lions had a early game against the Swiss, which went really well with a good win of 10-4 and later the day playing against young Spanish players, who will participate the Euros this year at Vichy, where the experience and knowledge on the field took the overhand from the Dutch Lions with a tight score of 8-6!
It rest now to the Final, where Dutch Lions facing the always strong Galaxy London team with players from Australia and New Zealand in a mixed formation. The Galaxy teams are famous for their high quality of Touch started by a huge icon in the Touch scene, Peter Walters aka Mr. Touch from New Zealand.
A privilege to play against such teams with high standards in the final. As the Dutch Lions started well with amazing work from Brad (scoring a try), Peter and Vince with the assists and outstanding Defense pushed Galaxy to the limits to work hard for the try’s passing by the tight Dutch Lions Defense.
With 2 minutes playing time to go, the Dutch Lions were leading 5-4 but somehow Galaxy got passed the Defense and managed to score the 5-5 with few minutes to go. Which mean the game needed to be decided with a Drop Off, what means that the teams will play 4 vs 4 for 2 minutes and the team that made the most scores in the 2 minutes wins. If the score is still undecided, golden try will apply and the game changes from 4 vs 4 to 3 vs 3.
Where the Dutch Lions almost took the win home (great play by Brad, Peter and Vince) with the last opportunity to force a score the ball got slipped from one of the Dutch Lions players close to the try line and Galaxy were now in possession manage scoring on the buzzer taking away the win: 6-5
We are proud of our men who did a very good job with Vince as Coach and Brad as Captain of the team. Next time the trophy will go back to The Netherlands again! Here are links of the livestream where you can watch the Dutch Lions Playing against:
Day 1 – Dutch Lions versus All Stars (link)
Day 2 – Dutch Lions versus Galaxy Cosmos London (Final) (link)
Foto’s van pb_visuals.sport
