31/8/2013 - Game 1 DOS ’46 3 vs KV Wageningen 3
After all the training, one practice match and a month of huge learning curves our first match day had finally arrived. For those of you who have not caught up with our Korfball agenda, we train and play outdoors on artificial turf until moving to the indoor competition in October. Each weekend it is likely we will play alternating home and away games. For home games it’s a relaxed five-minute cycle to the sports field. For away games we may be driving up to two hours to any area in the northern half of the Netherlands! To give everyone back home some perspective, the Netherlands is roughly the same size as Canterbury. The bonus for these two kiwis is seeing more of the country.
The first game was away at 3.30pm in Wageningen, an old, university dominated city of 38,000 in the central Netherlands. Wageningen also happened to be home to three Australian Korfball friends on a similar journey to our own.
DOS ’46 3 met at the sports hall in Nijeveen at 1pm and departed in a three car convoy, picking up two more of our players from just outside Zwolle on the way. Car three in the convoy consisted of our very able chauffer Youri, Jarolien, Rosa & I. We covered the 114km distance in just over an hour thanks to speed limits on the highways being anywhere up to 130km/hr, although the Toyota we were in did lack the acceleration of Vera’s BMW, and had to play catch up sometimes.
Arriving a KV Wageningen, Youri expertly squeezed the Toyota into a tiny parking space. The team wandered into the field only to be told we were playing on the other field next street over. There used to be two clubs in Wageningen but they recently merged into one. Instead of jumping back in the cars we decided to walk to our new destination. There were three options; the street route; the dirt road; or plough straight through the cornfield. It turned out the dirt road was certainly the long route. After following the tracks we spotted the Korfball field to our left past a couple of paddocks and had to continue on past the field and loop back to the playing venue. Our teammates assured us that this was not normal but it certainly made for an entertaining and unusual start to our competitive Dutch Korfball experience!
We arrived at the new venue, a full size Korfball turf surrounded by tall leafy trees rustling in the breeze. Roger our coach said that this was one of the more scenic clubs to play at. Now came the time to prepare ourselves for the game, no easy task after having traveled so far to play. It was pretty exciting donning the red and black of DOS ’46 for the first time in competition and learning the pre-game routines. After spending some time next to the playing field, during which we spotted the arrival of our Australian friends, our team returned to the changing room for the pre-game talk.
After spending a month in the Netherlands, we understand more Dutch than when we arrived but are still very much complete novices. Hence, the team talk was difficult to follow in its entirety. Roger, one of our coaches, has been incredibly patient and translated the important things into English for us once again during the team talk. Actually, all of those involved with DOS ’46 3 deserve a huge amount of praise for being so accommodating of us over the last month. It must be unusual and disruptive to their normal processes having two crazy kiwis in the mix.
It was our second time running through the pre-game warm up routine and shooting drills so we now understand of what to expect. With the warm up done and excitement rising, it was time for Rosa and I to become the first NZer’s to compete in a Dutch Korfball competition. Due to injuries and absenteeism within our male ranks, I was starting on defence while Coops was to join the action later in the game.
The game started slowly for both sides with patterns of play and shooting percentages indicative of having little recent match play. DOS and Wageningen traded the first couple of goals that tended to come from mistakes rather than good constructive Korfball. Wageningen then found their rhythm on attack and scored consecutive goals with some good mid-range shooting. This combined with disruptive defence allowed Wageningen to ease out a four-goal advantage after 15 minutes. We seemed to struggle mentally and did not settle into using the patterns of play that we had been training. For the rest of the half both teams showed glimpses of some nice Korfball but those glimpses were all too brief as the game was dominated by errors, disruptive defence and missed goals. Wageningen led 8-4 at half time, a score neither team would have been very happy with.
While I headed to the changing room, Coops jumped on court to get some shooting with the other subs. The two teams for the next game were warming on the field so Coops and the others subs had to join their drills to get some shooting in. Coops said it was a bit strange – partly because it’s different warming up with a whole team of strangers but in addition to that there’s a lack of communication due to not being able to speak Dutch. She definitely felt like the odd one out!
I was expecting an old-fashioned half time bollocking; Roger was calm (he later told me he is not the kind of coach to yell, as much as we deserved it) and stated quite obviously the things we needed to improve on for the second half. We really needed to switch on mentally to make a decent contest of this game.
The second half was certainly more constructive than the first on attack but still lacked the flow and organisation that we craved. I know personally that I often felt a bit lost, not knowing what my role was meant to be on court and having a few mental lapses which would have added to the tough day out we were having as a team. Every time we started to close the gap on the scoreboard, Wageningen would pull something out and the four-goal difference would return. I finally managed to get myself on the score sheet with a 6-7m shot in the second half. Coops was sitting on the bench becoming more convinced that she was not going to make the court. After playing three quarters of the game I was subbed off and shortly after Coops entered the game with 12 minutes left to play. It was a tough assignment to sub in and try to gel with a team that was a bit out of sorts. Coops made a couple of mistakes, as we all did, but also assisted in the set up of a goal or two. She certainly played with all the enthusiasm and effort that Coops brings to any game, performing well for her short time on court. The final score: KV Wageningen kept that four-goal lead until the end winning 15-11.
Following the game was the ritual of showering and having a beer at the club. It was a chance for Coops and I to catch up the Aussie crew of Ash, Robbo, Paddy and Heather who had come to watch. It sounded a bit strange to hear an Aussie accent again, and I’m sure they thought the same of listening to some kiwis. Coops and I enjoyed catching up with them, hearing stories about their time in the Netherlands so far, the Korfball they have experienced and the travel they have done. Another ritual we were introduced to was the post-game stop at McDonalds during the road trip home. Always up for trying something new, we arrived at Macca’s in Zwolle to find self-order touch screens. Once we figured those out we could peruse the Dutch version of a McDonald’s menu. Now the Japanese have rice burgers; Thailand has fried chicken and rice; McDonald’s in the Netherlands has such delicacies as the Joppieburger, McKroket and Stroopwafel McFlurry.
On the rest of the trip home we had a chance to reflect on some tough lessons we learned today. As a team we should be scoring 20 goals per game and while the intensity of the game is no different to back home, the players are much smarter in using their intensity much more effectively. Mentally we must also be tougher, the more Korfball we experience over here then the easier that will become. We look forward to training hard, gaining more Korfball experience and testing ourselves with more in games to come.
Lorenzo
After all the training, one practice match and a month of huge learning curves our first match day had finally arrived. For those of you who have not caught up with our Korfball agenda, we train and play outdoors on artificial turf until moving to the indoor competition in October. Each weekend it is likely we will play alternating home and away games. For home games it’s a relaxed five-minute cycle to the sports field. For away games we may be driving up to two hours to any area in the northern half of the Netherlands! To give everyone back home some perspective, the Netherlands is roughly the same size as Canterbury. The bonus for these two kiwis is seeing more of the country.
The first game was away at 3.30pm in Wageningen, an old, university dominated city of 38,000 in the central Netherlands. Wageningen also happened to be home to three Australian Korfball friends on a similar journey to our own.
DOS ’46 3 met at the sports hall in Nijeveen at 1pm and departed in a three car convoy, picking up two more of our players from just outside Zwolle on the way. Car three in the convoy consisted of our very able chauffer Youri, Jarolien, Rosa & I. We covered the 114km distance in just over an hour thanks to speed limits on the highways being anywhere up to 130km/hr, although the Toyota we were in did lack the acceleration of Vera’s BMW, and had to play catch up sometimes.
Arriving a KV Wageningen, Youri expertly squeezed the Toyota into a tiny parking space. The team wandered into the field only to be told we were playing on the other field next street over. There used to be two clubs in Wageningen but they recently merged into one. Instead of jumping back in the cars we decided to walk to our new destination. There were three options; the street route; the dirt road; or plough straight through the cornfield. It turned out the dirt road was certainly the long route. After following the tracks we spotted the Korfball field to our left past a couple of paddocks and had to continue on past the field and loop back to the playing venue. Our teammates assured us that this was not normal but it certainly made for an entertaining and unusual start to our competitive Dutch Korfball experience!
We arrived at the new venue, a full size Korfball turf surrounded by tall leafy trees rustling in the breeze. Roger our coach said that this was one of the more scenic clubs to play at. Now came the time to prepare ourselves for the game, no easy task after having traveled so far to play. It was pretty exciting donning the red and black of DOS ’46 for the first time in competition and learning the pre-game routines. After spending some time next to the playing field, during which we spotted the arrival of our Australian friends, our team returned to the changing room for the pre-game talk.
After spending a month in the Netherlands, we understand more Dutch than when we arrived but are still very much complete novices. Hence, the team talk was difficult to follow in its entirety. Roger, one of our coaches, has been incredibly patient and translated the important things into English for us once again during the team talk. Actually, all of those involved with DOS ’46 3 deserve a huge amount of praise for being so accommodating of us over the last month. It must be unusual and disruptive to their normal processes having two crazy kiwis in the mix.
It was our second time running through the pre-game warm up routine and shooting drills so we now understand of what to expect. With the warm up done and excitement rising, it was time for Rosa and I to become the first NZer’s to compete in a Dutch Korfball competition. Due to injuries and absenteeism within our male ranks, I was starting on defence while Coops was to join the action later in the game.
The game started slowly for both sides with patterns of play and shooting percentages indicative of having little recent match play. DOS and Wageningen traded the first couple of goals that tended to come from mistakes rather than good constructive Korfball. Wageningen then found their rhythm on attack and scored consecutive goals with some good mid-range shooting. This combined with disruptive defence allowed Wageningen to ease out a four-goal advantage after 15 minutes. We seemed to struggle mentally and did not settle into using the patterns of play that we had been training. For the rest of the half both teams showed glimpses of some nice Korfball but those glimpses were all too brief as the game was dominated by errors, disruptive defence and missed goals. Wageningen led 8-4 at half time, a score neither team would have been very happy with.
While I headed to the changing room, Coops jumped on court to get some shooting with the other subs. The two teams for the next game were warming on the field so Coops and the others subs had to join their drills to get some shooting in. Coops said it was a bit strange – partly because it’s different warming up with a whole team of strangers but in addition to that there’s a lack of communication due to not being able to speak Dutch. She definitely felt like the odd one out!
I was expecting an old-fashioned half time bollocking; Roger was calm (he later told me he is not the kind of coach to yell, as much as we deserved it) and stated quite obviously the things we needed to improve on for the second half. We really needed to switch on mentally to make a decent contest of this game.
The second half was certainly more constructive than the first on attack but still lacked the flow and organisation that we craved. I know personally that I often felt a bit lost, not knowing what my role was meant to be on court and having a few mental lapses which would have added to the tough day out we were having as a team. Every time we started to close the gap on the scoreboard, Wageningen would pull something out and the four-goal difference would return. I finally managed to get myself on the score sheet with a 6-7m shot in the second half. Coops was sitting on the bench becoming more convinced that she was not going to make the court. After playing three quarters of the game I was subbed off and shortly after Coops entered the game with 12 minutes left to play. It was a tough assignment to sub in and try to gel with a team that was a bit out of sorts. Coops made a couple of mistakes, as we all did, but also assisted in the set up of a goal or two. She certainly played with all the enthusiasm and effort that Coops brings to any game, performing well for her short time on court. The final score: KV Wageningen kept that four-goal lead until the end winning 15-11.
Following the game was the ritual of showering and having a beer at the club. It was a chance for Coops and I to catch up the Aussie crew of Ash, Robbo, Paddy and Heather who had come to watch. It sounded a bit strange to hear an Aussie accent again, and I’m sure they thought the same of listening to some kiwis. Coops and I enjoyed catching up with them, hearing stories about their time in the Netherlands so far, the Korfball they have experienced and the travel they have done. Another ritual we were introduced to was the post-game stop at McDonalds during the road trip home. Always up for trying something new, we arrived at Macca’s in Zwolle to find self-order touch screens. Once we figured those out we could peruse the Dutch version of a McDonald’s menu. Now the Japanese have rice burgers; Thailand has fried chicken and rice; McDonald’s in the Netherlands has such delicacies as the Joppieburger, McKroket and Stroopwafel McFlurry.
On the rest of the trip home we had a chance to reflect on some tough lessons we learned today. As a team we should be scoring 20 goals per game and while the intensity of the game is no different to back home, the players are much smarter in using their intensity much more effectively. Mentally we must also be tougher, the more Korfball we experience over here then the easier that will become. We look forward to training hard, gaining more Korfball experience and testing ourselves with more in games to come.
Lorenzo