What a day. Douglas Sport Centre, midday, Sunday, January 13th, and what’s this? Ed. City are here already! But where are the Dundonians? Don’t worry, Noggin Nog, they’ll be here. Sometime soon, perhaps? And so the day began…
I needn’t have worried too much though. Dundee did turn up, most of them just after 12:30, and the most important one of all was amongst them. Our beloved Amy, who only started playing korfball last year (51 weeks ago, to be exact), was here to say goodbye. Despite her meek and mild manner (at least while sober), Amy has been a bit of a trooper for Dundee – always willing to play for us, no matter whether we were at home or away, or how far out of our depth we were going to be. There was to be none of that today though: anyone who was going to be out of their depth today was going to be in a nice warm cuddly team with someone big and grown up who could paddle them to safety. Amy would be a Quokka (it was decided), and Quokka’s live on islands where nobody lets them drown. Erwin was going to be a Quokka too (that was only fair). Nigel, Paul and Wendy were going to be Kangaroos (boing, boing). Pete and Kirsty would be Kiwis (well, somebody had to be), while Fiona, Michael, Shane and Caroline snapped their way into the Crocodile’s squad. The Kakapos ended up with slightly more than their fair share of Dundonians (Steven, Alan, Ross, Terri and Mary), but no-one was going to complain.
Lots of running around was done just before the kick-off, Mary sorting out the sorting-hats (eat your heart out, JK Rowling), Michael penning in the teams, and yours truly stealing all the money. Terri, Steve and their little team of helpers seemed to take charge of the posts and court markings, and all of a sudden we were ready go. The first game got underway just after 1pm, and umpteen matches were battled out back-to-back, in true Scottish korfball style. Not that many people were playing back to back, of course. On occasions, I do believe that I even saw some people (who were generally facing the right way) scoring some goals. And the referees apparently agreed: the scores came in every 17 minutes, on the dot, and the dot was feeling quite happy about that. Just to prove that it really was happening, here are some of the figures: 2-0, 2-4, 2-2, 1-4, 0-4, 0-5 (can you spot the pattern developing here?)… As the competition started to draw to a close, people suddenly started to realise that none of the scores really mattered anyway, and all that there was left to play for was pride (and beauty). Mary sank the final goal of the day for the Kakapos, and the contest was over. The Kangaroos had won, but only on points… the Quokka’s won the quiz (but only on points!)… and the Kakapos, Kiwis, Crocodiles and Quokkas shared the honours in the (harshly judged) beauty stakes – whatever happened to age before beauty?
All in all, the day turned out to be a huge success (he says, in ever such a humble tone). Forty korfers from all over the country had turned up (just on the off chance), magically managing to balance out in gender (21 girls, 19 boys – amazing!), and magically managing to get along with each other just fine. The only downers for the day were Lucie’s ankle giving way when she landed on someone else’s foot (Lucie had forgotten how Kangaroos are meant to bounce), and Alan ending up with a busted gum (none of us even knew that flightless birds had gums, TBH). With any luck though, all of the injuries will mend, and people will take away only the good memories. Amy will, for sure… we got her a mug with a photo of all our mugs on as her farewell present.
Bon voyage, Amy!
