“I’m starting to think this is all some elaborate practical joke.”

We had disembarked the train at Studenzen, where the train station remarkably resembled the one at Rockbank and had followed the instructions on the website – go to the bank, cross the highway and follow the road. The single lane small country road that did not look like it was going to some fields.

The tournament was Pig Me Up 2, a hat tournament run by local club B|Bears (no relation to Humphery apparently) in a town we couldn’t decide was Kirchberg or Studenzen. One hundred and forty players had their names down; mostly Austrian, a handful of Slovakians, some Germans, a couple of Americans and three Australians.

We were ready to consult the directions again before we spotted the soccer club in behind some tennis courts that had the telltale sign of a tournament – white things gliding through the air. It was around 5:30pm on Friday afternoon and the club was still setting things up, so we got ourselves settled and started our usual [repotoir] of silly games such as Take It On The Chest and Blade Guts.

“Hello!” a voice boomed from the clubrooms. This was Gregor, the local do-everything guy. As soon as we responded he picked us as the Australians he had exchanged emails with. “We’re still getting things ready so get your tent set up and we’ll have a beer ready for you!” We picked our spot in the shade on the edge of the soccer pitch that appeared to have been cut out of a corn field. This elicited many Field Of Dreams build-it-and-they-will-come references, which were hilarious for about as long as it took you to read that sentence.

Once things were settled, Gregor shouted us a pint each of the local brew and we got to meeting the locals. Previously we had been in Graz where knowledge of the English language among shopkeepers wasn’t crash hot, so we were pleasantly surprised to find all the players were fluent in English. The inital thing we noticed about the club is how “very GFUC” it was – there were a lot of young players around the 15-19 year old mark.

I think Gregor may have talked us up a bit to the club as the “Worlds players coming to our tournament” because they were all very keen to meet us. After some throwing with the local kids we took a seat in the shade and met Herman and Marcel. They had only just started playing ultimate in Northern Austria and thought it would be a great road trip. We exchanged war stories of previous sporting endeavours over some cold beers. As much as we wanted the party to continue, we retired to the tent shortly after getting our team shirts.

I rose at 8am, thinking it would be good to get moving a bit. It turns out my team wasn’t playing until 10am. There were nine teams at the tournament, with two fields being used. 40 minute games without half, so getting a fast start was always going to be the key. I met up with my team – myself and Leo were considered the veterans because being in our late 20s was enough to qualify us as such. The rest of the team were all young and full of energy. I was asked for some advice to kick us off. I shrugged and said, “Have fun.”

Now the standard of play was something I hadn’t really thought about. I played against The Big EZ at Worlds and figured if they were Austria’s top team then the standard might be alright. This was very much a beginner to intermediate tournament, with a few token gun players scattered throughout the teams. There was no wind to speak of, but zone D seemed to be the flavour of the day and it was working for most teams. The might of the yellow Chardonnay team faced up to the Red team in the first game. As you would expect, there was a lot of excitement to contain and some frantic offence early on resulted in a lot of turns.

We ended up losing that game and our second game to the White team. Heads were down but unlike some other teams, no bickering had ensued. We kept to our mantra of “have fun” and hit the ground running in our third game. It was now that our team really started to gel. Hucks were coming off, there was good flow once we got around or through zones and all of our players were being used.

In one of the breaks I spoke with Natalie, who is originally from New Zealand but is now living in Canada. Among other things we spoke about the learning curve in ultimate. Her theory is that it takes around five years to become a truly great ultimate player. The skills and basics can be learned quickly but things such as tactical knowledge, field vision and spatial awareness can only be gained through experience, and only then it relied on individual ability to learn by doing. This was a theory I mulled over in my head for a while. I thought straight away of many, many Australian players who I considered to be great players within the five year time period. However once again we go back to the “trickle down” effect I mentioned in the UK Tour article; in Australia the top-to-bottom of elite players to social players is very shallow, meaning that new players tend to learn off Australian representatives in one form or another more readily than those in bigger ultimate populations such as North America. I also put up the argument that things such as field vision and spatial awareness can be learned in other sports growing up. Horses for courses, really.

So at the end of the day Chardonnay faced Pink and we held a respectable 2-2 record. This game was quite interesting spirit-wise. There were calls made and discussions had that were resolved quite amicably, which I find no problem with, but the number of calls far outweighed the number in any other game of that tournament. Sure, ultimate was played within the rules but it got me thinking about how badly people want to win, even at hat tournaments where absolutely nothing is at stake beyond Sunday afternoon. Some people have that competitive spirit that they can’t (or won’t) shake no matter what.

The night brought the massive pig-on-a-spit-roast dinner, hence the name of the tournament. This was a great social event as we all sat outside and discussed the merits of mixed showers. Oh yeah, that’s something I should have mentioned by this point as a key difference between home and here – no showers were allocated to either gender, but at times some agreed to an unspoken arrangement of “girls in the home rooms and guys in the visitor’s.” In fact there was a survey being conducted by a university student about attitudes towards the showers. The Australian perspective was summed up pretty well by a FS team member’s question to the group – “What’s the German translation for ‘Guys like tits’?”

Speaking of cultural differences, 16 year olds are legally allowed to drink beer and wine in licensed venues in Austria. Great because no one missed out on the party but it certainly presented a veritable minefield in terms of flirting. The FS team decided to play it safe and stay out of it all together. The party was set up in a fire station, which was a great concept except for the complete lack of ventilation made it, as eloquently stated by a FS team member, “Hot as balls in here.” I guess another interesting cultural difference was noted when the Europeans, even the sixteen year olds, kept things in moderation (with one notable exception called Jani) while the North Americans, Brits and Aussies getting rather jolly. No one got hurt, unless you count injuries sustained running through cornfields. Oh, and Rich.

Rich was formerly of the UK but now living in Vienna. Poor old Rich had a rough night, leading to one of the greatest throwaways I have seen in recent times on Sunday morning. Basically you’re looking an overheard that was more disc-spike than hammer, with a total yardage gain of around fifteen feet. What was more of a story was Rich telling us about his participation in the UK’s variation of Major League Ultimate (ie: refereed ultimate) last year. The rule variations were significant: 30 minutes of game play (clock stopped on all stoppages, resulting in around 90-100 minute games anyway), a three-point line at the brick mark with all other scores being two points, and new discs being thrown straight to the offence after an out of bounds turnover rather than the disc having to be retrieved. Rich’s opinion? “It was certainly interesting, but hard to shake the habits of not needing to count stalls and such. However the players all stopped taking it seriously and some took great pride in being fouled out of games. It was a bit of a novelty but there’s not much of a future in it.” So does he think it changes the game? “Oh totally. Everyone starts playing to the whistle, seeing what they can get away with. You see it in football and basketball and I think people don’t want to see ultimate get lumped in with those sports.”

Chardonnay’s final record for the tournament was three wins, three losses and one draw, which was enough to earn us, maybe 4th place. I think. We weren’t really sure. We were happy that our no-warm-ups-or-downs policy, all-inclusive offence and “have fun” mantra got us some wins and great gameplay, and reflecting back a day later I think it was one of the most fun I’ve had with a hat team. Too often you see players getting frustrated with team mates for one reason or another; too many throwaways, not getting any field time, or not keeping a force – all examples I witnessed. So for a team to meet each other on Saturday morning and by Sunday afternoon still be in high spirits in each others’ company is something that should be remembered. Thank you B|Bears, thank you Gregor and thank you Chardonnay for a fun weekend.