Tuesday morning I woke up in a heap after crawling in at 4 am and my room mate Nonny was soundly still in bed while Liverpool Saints goalie Waddo who spent the night out with us was still on our couch . Justin messaged me about breakfast after skipping out on the night as he didn’t go out and hid in his hotel room because he was “tired” and as far as I remember none of us were being beckoned to play the early games that day . Tournament games start at 6 am and my schedule is blesses with afternoon games and today’s match is vs. Crown & Sceptre which as far as I know is a local club and that game is not until 10:15 pm . The only bad thing about these late starts is that I can’t start drinking before the game as I would like to impress my team mates with a win or two . I’m on two teams at this tournament and the team I’m making my debut with on this evening is the Okinawa Sniperz who mostly hail from Okinawa and are American service people which means they are in the armed forces . When I say mostly it’s because only 4 of the players are actually Sniperz and the rest of us are add ones because the actual team left their organizer Kevin Mingoia out to dry as they all bailed on him without making any payments 😡 this happens a lot and I’m actually dealing with someone in Toronto that owes me money for my squad still from December and is now just not responding or coming to games .... how fucking cool is that ? C&*t !
So when Nonny woke up we all went for breakfast to this place called Station City Cafe which is down the road we are staying on and in an arcade which over here is a mall or is it the same here in Adelaide ? Not too sure but we went into a building type alley and we found this place and grabbed some food and sat down and collected our heads before heading back to Woolworth’s as we’ve realized buying stuff from the shop is a much better option then buying stuff from restaurants nearby . Waddo left and went back to meet his team who were wondering if he was still alive and in all honesty they missed out on a good night as the tournament will start now and the time to have fun will surely dwindle . I grabbed myself some fresh bread and went back to the room and relaxed until my team mates Cody & Cheyenne came by and then I finally got to meet Kevin who are all Sniperz and are all in the armed forces in some capacity . I think Kevin is a private contractor to them and Cody is with the Air Force and Cheyenne is a marine and the last two are actually married which makes for interesting conversation 😬 our other room mate Robert Soliman who is on the Pro Look A division team also arrives and we all introduced ourselves and you gotta know it’s gonna be interesting having another goalie and a Japanese fella all sharing one hotel room . I’ve paid the extra loot to have a room to myself and the others are sharing a room .... I snore so hopefully it doesn’t disrupt them .
I wanted to take a pre game nap bit all the hype of meeting new team mates and making new friends is pumping through my veins like I’m on steroids or something . At some point we all decided to head over to the rink which is really close and is only a tram ride away . A few of us decide to head downstairs where we finally met Kevin Mingoia who organized our Okinawa Sniperz squad and we all walked the 4 minute walk to the tram which we almost missed and ended up jogging to catch with bags in hand we all caught it and made the one stop trek to get off near the arena . At this point my plan for the week is to tram it there with dry bag and uber it to the hotel with wet heavy bags as we can’t leave our gear at the arena (safely) . When we get off the tram we have to backtrack another 4 minute walk and we are at the arena which if we walked the whole route is only a 15 minute walk but that wasn’t in the cards for me . I am gonna need all the rest I can get going between hockey mode and party mode on a daily basis as these beer league tournaments are ... the teams that stay in their rooms really don’t know what they are missing ! I’ve been there before and when you show up to the tournament ending party and you don’t know anyone you really realize that you’ve missed out . It’s better to live in the moment and give it your all burning the candle at both ends and only the truly seasoned vets that have done what I’m talking about can understand what I’m talking about .
We got to the rink early enough to sit around and watch a few other teams including Brandon Baileys Tasmanian team the Van Demons who have the coolest logos and we watched Cheyennne play in her first all women’s match which she was so stoked to play in . She played for Pro Look which is the tournaments individual squads which have teams in every division and is all organized by Glenn Foll who runs the tournament and is working his behind off in the pro shop when I finally got to meet him . He looked frazzled as he must have had a million things running through his mind when I first met him and I decided to give him his room as he is a hockey legend in Australia and I truly understand the pains of running a tournament ... as I said to him we can talk later or tomorrow . Game time is soon approaching and our Aussie team mates filter in and we all introduce ourselves and hit the dressing room for our debut against Crown & Sceptre who by this time is apparently known to be the favourites in this match . We had other plans 😛
Our dressing room for the first game was room 5 which is like a large closet area that has no shower and is carpeted . We all get dressed and head down the corridor to our bench as we avoid the spots that are not protected from the concrete that can easily destroy the edge on our blades and we patiently await the ice to be resurfaced and then we enter the ice ... my first step on the ice almost threw me on my face as the ice was very wet and very soft and my first step sunk in instead of gliding but this is to be expected in a rink so far south of the equator that has been beaten up all day long . Our opponent step on the ice full of confidence and jump on us and continued to pepper us and outplay us for the majority of the match but my stubbornness prevailed as I continued to make the saves needed to get the win . I didn’t have to make any big saves as my defence played the way I had asked them by not being goalies themselves and picking up the passer instead of trying to block shots .... we did talk about this before the game and when we got our one and only chance of the game we potted it ! That one power play , that’s all we needed to grab us that 1-0 lead which we fought hard to hold on to . In the final minutes of the game we continuously iced the puck as we played the clock and just before the final whistle I made a blocker side save that almost rolled into the net but Cody Vogel came out of nowhere to save the day and maintain my shutout !!! Good thing he’s a goalie in Okinawa and knows not to just watch the play occur which is usually the outcome and his reaction was a game saver as we went on to win that game by that very slim margin of 1-0 . As I mentioned earlier I didn’t make any game saving saves but kept it basic and didn’t give up many rebounds and made the saves a goalie should make . This was a team effort and we all skated away with a win we probably shouldn’t have had as we were totally outplayed and outshot . The timekeeper as usual counted the saves much differently then what we saw and if you ask me we were probably outshot 25-5 but the way we played as a team of players that only met this afternoon I would say was very impressive . Hopefully we can get some more goals next game which is tomorrow afternoon which leaves us time to celebrate 🤪
Kevin ordered us a cooler of beer which was $90 for 24 .... yes you read that correctly ! As I mentioned in an earlier post , alcohol is not cheap in Australia 🇦🇺. We hung around at the rink while the only game later then ours was played and then hung out in the bar area enjoying our beers and I’m almost sure we were the last ones to leave the rink that night and Glenn Foll dropped us off at the hotel and Nonny , Kevin and Brandon all wanted to go out so we hit the streets in hope of finding a bar to drink at . It’s around 1 am and Hindley Street is a dead zone .... all the bars on the street are closed again quite early as they were the night before so we walked over to the bars I knew were opened later and they were closing and didn’t serve us and we were told the only place to get a drink was at the casino so off we went to the big casino . Along the route to the bars we did try to get into a couple strip clubs but were denied because Nonny was wearing crocs ? We told him to go back to the room to put shoes on but he’s only brought crocs with him ... yes this is a head scratcher but nothing is surprising with Nonny lol 😝 we did wonder if we would get denied at the casino and we did agree if Nonny was denied at this last ditch effort to get drinks that we would go in without him but thankfully this fancy casino doesn’t have the morals of the strip joints . On the way to the casino we passed a bunch of drunks but the one that stood out was the native woman that had her titties flopping around as she lay in the middle of the street in front of police officers that weren’t even batting an eye .... she honestly had a face that looked like a monster . What’s in store for us in the casino ? Bright lights , machines making noise and a big beautiful bar with a bartender that seemed standoffish to begin with but he warmed up to us as I asked for my ever particular gin and tonic ...can I have a Hendricks with fevertree tonic and a lime ? That was my drink of choice when I was out on the town and the bartender made them nice and stiff . We sat down and of course one of the locals that we clearly didn’t know invited himself to sit down with us .... what the fuck is up with the locals in Adelaide ? Are we wearing a sign saying please talk to us , be our friends ? Ugh ... another person we have to ignore that won’t get the picture until we get up and walk away ! He wasn’t too annoying but the whole point is that we want to hang out amongst ourselves and not with some random drunk that has a story to tell us .... anyways .... we stayed until we were annoyed enough and a couple of us even played some games and then we made our way back to the hotel as we watched Brandon catch an Uber back to his team mates place . It’s 4 am and it’s time to catch some zzzzz’s . Next game is ADF Storm ... let’s see how that goes 🤔
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