The plot is thickening! Despite running out of budget to advertize our trainings, we still had people finding and joining us every week. Early in August there were times with only 2-3 players… Within a few weeks we had 8 to 10 people attending the trainings.

Some of them are ex-Tiszavirág players, others are completely new to the game.

The first big question we faced was if we should participate in the Tiszavirág’s 6th Budapest Cup. First of all, it was listed as National Championships on the federation’s site, and I would not have wanted The Current to take on a challenge with so high stakes after such a short amount of time. The organizer of the event, András Klima assured us that the tournament is not intended to be an N.C. and we agreed that we set up matches for the 3 Hungarian teams during the fall, meaning enough time for us to get prepared.

The other concern was simply that with 6 people to enlist, the entry fee was beyond my budget and I didn’t want to ask the players to pay for getting their asses kicked. Still, I was hoping that our rookie dad and son duo gets a spot to play and experience the pace of a tournament.

The Orcas helped us out as always and 3 of us got to play with the Serbian team. My plan was that we stay back and use the extra weight to top the defense in front of the goal, but that wasn’t happening much. We often ended up being forward and if we lost the ball, we had trouble getting back in time. Many times I was angry at myself cause the kids were actually showing mad skills and I was the one screwing up attacks not feeling where they are and taking too long to pass. On the other hand, we scored once or twice and were in a great mood. Asked them if they prefer to score with the cost of letting more in or if they prefer to stop more attacks, and they wanted to score of course. Great spirit, they have everything what winning takes! In a couple years these kids grow to be the best just like the youth of Budweis or Türkey did. They are gonna have a finswimming/UWH/UWR training camp with the national youth teams of Türkey in mid September. I hope others will come too to experience the hospitability of the people of Kikinda and learn from each other.

But back to the Budapest Cup! 5 teams registered for the tournament, and the results are:

1. Trelleborg (SWE)

2. Wien (AUS)

3. Tiszavirág (HUN)

4. PFBSE Delfinek (HUN)

5. Orcas (SRB)

Overall, it was a great tournament. I had to be surface ref multiple times and I think the matches were nice and clean. I was worried we’d get crushed by the Swedish team, but as it turned out, they were playing in a gentle and elegant manner and still managed to take the lead.

Loved the penalty tournament, and I have to admit, Moby managed to improve it a lot. Bet you don’t know the origins of this exciting event!