Organised by the Demon Monsters skater Hockey club (from Harlow in Essex) and held at the Derby 'storm' extreme ports centre. Saturday 29th of June 2002. The tournament was between

The venue was a converted industrial unit is a run down area of Derby. The Rink was originally built for Basketball, but was always intended for 'Dual use'. It has rounded corners and interlocking light blue plastic floor tiles - similar to the surface in the UK-Inline arena in Sheffield. Some of the tiles where lifting dangerously, and skaters complained of the floor not being level. The tournament was a Puck tournament, but the puck seemed to move quite well over the plastic surface and so was not as much of a disadvantage to our team as it could have been.

The boards where fibreglass moulded construction, but not very well fixed to the floor. Some heavy checking caused sections of the boarding to move dramatically. The rink was light and airy and gave the impression of and ice rink rather than a sports hall.

A major problem was that there was only one door onto the rink, and that was not available for the players to get access to their bench. The floor level at the bench allowed players to jump onto the rink quite easily, but it was a lot more difficult to get off again!

Our first game was against the Demon aliens, the hosts of the tournament. They promised to be quite tough as this was their a-team , and they had been beaten only by the Cambridge monsoons in their league. As it turned out, they were not a match for the pent up onslaught of the tornadoes. The games where only 15 minutes each way, but we managed to get 6 goals in the first half, with the ball barely going into our end of the rink. The guys played really hard and where determined not to let this puck thing that northerners insist on playing with, get in their way. The second half slowed down dramatically. The Aliens where demoralised, and we had nothing further to prove. We still stuck away two more goals, but conceded one to them. First half 6:0, second half 2:1, final result 8:1. We must be able to keep the pressure up throughout our games if we are going to do well in this tournament.

The refs where letting a lot of poor checks, elbowing and fouls go. They should have reigned in that behaviour but didn't.

We then had the pleasure of watching the Wakefield warriors completely destroy the Aliens in a similar way to us. But, these Wakefield warriors are big. Their captain and star player's nick name is 'Tash', presumably because he would have a moustache if he didn't shave! (he's the guy on the left in the dream team photo below). This team would not look out of place in a junior tournament. We were putting the likes of Karim and Joe up against these giants. This team won last years nationals with only a few changes. Our next match against them was going to be interesting.

Oxford v Wakefield.

They were big and we had to work very hard. We were able to hold them off most of the time, but couldn't help but concede three goals. In the final minute, and 3:0 down, we went for broke to try for at least one goal and pulled Charlotte off to be replaced by an outfield player (Joe). Having 5 players against 4 wasn't enough and the warriors pushed the puck past our players towards the goal. It slowed right down in the mouth of the goal, was just about to halt behind the goal line, when David managed to skate back and flick it out of harms way. The final score was 3:0. As it happens, this was the least amount of goals that Wakefield was able to score against any of the other teams.

Sharp Shooters
Between the preliminaries and the finals, they held a Sharp-Shooter competition. Easy and Doc where playing for the honour of the club (having found a last minute sponsorship deal to pay the entrance fee!). Easy went first - and fell over. Doc went second and popped the five pucks all into the net within a very short time - he looked to me like the winner. Easy had another go. He fell over. Then, just when we thought it was over - easy had ANOTHER go- this time he.........didnt fall over!!, but obviously thinking about not falling over and getting the ball in the net was too much for him. Some more practice with a puck maybe Easy! Doc didnt win the sharp shooter trophy, but it was close.

Oxford v The wasps

Coming second in our group meant that we had to play the winner of the other group to decide our placing. We had to play the West coast wasps. We had to pull out something special here. If we dropped our guard they would sting us badly. They had won their group quite easily, and we were probably the underdogs. They were not used to loosing. They speak not of how many games they concede, but of how many goals they concede in a season. They had fancy shirts and colour coordinated helmets. They are very well drilled and very skilful.

We decided to throw every thing at it and play double shifts of the strongest lines. If we got this game, then we would be in the finals. We played hard, and got up to 1:1. Jacob then managed a goal that their goalie was not happy with. Apparently Jacob was in the goalie crease when he received the puck and scored. The goalie complained to the ref who ignored him. We then scored another goal bringing it up to 3:1. The Goalie swore at the ref, who didn't ignore him, he yellow carded him. More verbal abuse followed, and they Red carded him. While they stopped the match and got a new goalie ready, the manager got Red carded!

We looked on in amazement as they fell apart. Blown away by an inability to accept defeat. This was a team with a major attitude problem - at least amongst a vocal few.

The game was then conceded. We had won 3:1 with 6 minutes of the 30 minute game un-played. We would have liked to have shown them that we can win without controversy, but hey, we were on to the finals. Against.... The Wakefield warriors again!

The Final: Oxford v Wakefield warriors

We really were the underdogs for the final. Wakefield hadn't got any smaller in the intervening hours, but we had got more confident after the Wasps game. Wakefield had not conceded a single goal over the whole of the tournament and we were determined to show how we could measure up to them. We played with spirit, but Wakefield was too powerful. We managed two goals against their previously un-defeated goalie, but the final score was 6:2. We were happy with that and felt that we had a moral victory on our hands given the relative scale of our two teams. Doc got a butt end in the arm and sat out the final minutes minutes of the game , looking very dazed.

Dream Team