ParmaCup 2012 Team BOL
02/09/2012
After returning home from the Parma 2012 Cup a question froam a teammate kept running through my head: “What did you learn in Parma?”
So i started thinking on how to describe what i actually learned. And therefor is this my version of the story:
The set-up:
Guys from three different teams, with different tactics, idea’s, background and sex. From the provinces of Limburg Belgium and Limburg of the Netherlands. The Best Of Limburg team started with a easy, no-nonsense set-up of the players, a small discussion on subbing but nothing big to learn here…. Or is the simplicity of the system and set-up, and the small discussions to set the mind on focus the main thing to learn here???
Our first game:
Pre-game discussion was again simple: a focus on placements of individuals under water. Using the system of the senor-array of cars (Raymond the leader, would he be in the car buisiness??) to explain the distance and way to place yourself and be able to receive passes. The rest of the talk was about focusing, pumping up everybody and face our first enemy: “Southern Gold”. We took off full speed and (we heard this first-hand from one of the guys) caught the Kiwi’s by surprise! What got us there? Focus, willpower and determination!!!
The next few games:
Against Kingsbridge Krays, Serrasalmus and Parmasub HSD all had the same learning things for me. Once again the way the team was focusing, and discussing small problems in placements under water made it easy to understand and improve. At one point we took a 0-1 in the beginning of the game, but the willpower of the team and us being able to keep the motivation/focus high gave us a quick 1-1 and from there on we made it to 2-1 against our difficult game versus the Kingsbridge Krays. It has to be said that the thing i’ve learned was again the importance of focus. Raymond had start out of the pool to get the young guys together, because of their playful (i have never had that problem….ahrum…) and un-focused attitude. As a trainer and coach i realize the importance of focus, but still learned or saw a way to get the heads of un-focused players ready without being frustrated or messing everything up.
The A-poule:
We got there!!!! The A-list of all the poules with Dordrecht, Pirahna Pecs and West London as our hordes in the way.
Here we started to realize what the outcome of this tournament could be… We set goals to reach the top-7 in Parma, and mathematically we already had reached number 8 or 7. Instead of being content or afraid of what would follow next, we even improved our focus with once-again some small working-points in how to work with corner and wall-actions.
The results from our focus and positive-teamspirit were:
BOL – Pirahna Pecs: 4 – 1
BOL – West London: 2 – 0
Dordrecht – BOL: 2 – 0
This last game we lost, but with our heads up high. They were the better team and scored the first goal pretty quick. After that the refs fucked up the game so much (they didn’t even knew how to give a puck-advantage) that we weren’t able to set up any decent offence. But they were the better team so fair!
The podium…
So we reached the finals for 3-4 place. We didn’t know the other team, but still focused on the same. But the game against the French U-23 was to much for us. they beat us on tactics, had a great technique and real good stamina. They were on the puck with 2-3 guys from the beginning till the end. We managed to break through a few times, but they quickly took the puck and scored a few times. After those early goals the team lost their beloved focus and willpower, and i only saw individual actions sometimes followed up by one teammate but not by a team.
So we are 4th in the Parma 2012 Cup and i had FUN FUN FUN!
I guess you already figured out what i learned on this tournament… indeed, to focus!!! So now it’s time to sleep and dream of reaching number one at the Parma cup! (we already have beaten the winners of this year in our first game, so next year i’m going to… focus a little bit more)
P.S. Sylvain if you read this like you say you do, then comment on the articles to prove it!
Geschreven door Bram Vreven
