The Travelling Goalie: Adelaide Challenge Cup 2020

Usually I try to write a daily report on what’s happening during my travels but this week has been especially busy since I’ve arrived here in Adelaide . I’m gonna give an overall coverage for the full week and will try to get back to my normal routine for the remainder of trip but it’s really tough trying to find the time to sit down peacefully to get my thoughts out and posted on my page . At the moment I’m on a flight from Adelaide to Auckland and everything is still a bit fuzzy from the last week of absolute insanity . Usually I’m in a quiet room where I have had some personal time and space but this trip I have been rooming with a couple crazy guys and our room is ground zero for parties and team meetings . My room mates are Cam Green And Gary “Garza” Goodall and they are playing for the Travelling Goons team from New Zealand 🇳🇿 their team is filled with players that compete in the Hockey House leagues mostly from the BHL with a few FHL skaters . I’m listed as their backup goalie but I doubt I will see any ice time and to start off I wasn’t really even planning to dress for their games as I have my own team to play with but it’s organized as much as throwing dice on the table and figuring out what you’ve rolled .... the North Pole Strip Polers is a team that I played for last year called the Okinawa Sniperz . Last year there were only 4 actual players from that team and we filled in the rest of the spots with my self and some Aussies .... after that tourney we had so much fun together that the organizer invited us all to go back so we all said yes then one by one the Sniperz all dropped out ! Even the team organizer bailed on us in favour of going to Bangkok next month 😢 yeah that sucked pretty bad and he knows . Too bad because I doubt we will ever play for his team again , I personally won’t make plans to travel with him again ... no offence Kevin but the excuse of not having money for a trip we planned a year ago doesn’t make sense to me or the other guys .

So when I arrived I spent a night with Glen Foll who is the tournament organizer and had to do an interview for the local newspaper along with a photo shoot which for some reason they picked the picture where I’m not smiling ... oh well ! It’s always cool ending up in the local news overseas , the next day we set up the bar and the merch shop at the rink and then the tourney kicked off after meeting up with a few of my friends like Brandon ,Nonny , Isaac and Marty and we had a great lunch at a local bakery before moving my bags into my Glen’s room at the Breakfree hotel . Thanks for hooking up the couple free nights there ! We had our first game that evening against local team Adelaide Tigers and a couple friends are on that team , they will be aiming to win the tourney and with Jason Nordin on their squad you have to know they are favourites but so are we since we lost in championship last year and the team that beat us is not there this year (Aussie Heat) this should be a good game ! When the time came we hit the ice and the game started with us scoring the first two goals as we went up 2-0 and then the second period started and we were like a different team as the Tigers swarmed us scoring two to tie the game up ! Third started with more of the same as we gave up the lead and then battled our way back to tie the game 3-3 . When we left the ice the mood with us was not good as we felt it like a loss and the tigers seemed more positive but apparently they felt they should have won but honestly we outplayed them for a period and a half and they had the same pressure which evens out to a tie . That night we ended up doing hotel party in our room and management came by to quiet us down as the neighbour was being a whiney bitchboy so we killed the tunes and ten minutes later the manager was back and he moved the complaining neighbour . Honestly I don’t know why they don’t just block an area for hockey teams and not let other travellers book rooms beside us . We switched rooms and received another complaint and moved again only to meet the manager again .... that was the last night I heard of or experienced any complaints so maybe the hotel sorted that out ?

Next day I moved into my next room once The Travelling Goons arrived ! That morning I woke up grabbed some food at McDonald’s and headed to the rink where I was able to leave my bag in a small room overnight so I took the tram with Nonny who I hardly saw all week !?!?! For some reason all the usual crazies that I party with were all on their best behaviour , good thing we have crazy Juha aka Lenny to have a few laughs with .... this guys a riot from Brisbane and is hanging with my team mates Cory ,Liam and Mark who all played for other teams last year and I had high hopes for pushing us over th finish line this year but it was not meant to be as we showed up for our next game knowing we had to win but instead we did the opposite 😒 I’m not gonna blame anyone for us all playing shit all week but it doesn’t help that I’ve been injured for a while and haven’t seen much ice before heading out here and that puck bounced like a basketball out there ! You can only imagine pucks hitting my blocker and going into my own net and pucks bouncing off my pads straight up in the air only to hit my catcher and going into the net. It was frustrating and the whole team had their own frustrations along the way as it began to become more evident that we should have played in a lower division but for that we can blame our organizer who bailed on us .... I can’t remember the final score against the Van Demons from Tasmania but I’m almost sure we lost 5-0 or something. Maybe it was 5-3 but I do know we were shutout in one of the games we had played . That game was at 1 pm and the Goons should be at hotel so I head back and move my bags from room 206 to room 318 where I finally find myself in a room I don’t have to move from until I leave on Monday .... this day was Wednesday and the Goons have a late game . I passed out hard when I settled in and that’s the only Goons game I missed and unfortunately they lost that game to the Adelaide Blackhawks .... when they returned to the room I woke up and Nonny and a few others visited our room and nobody bothered us that night .

Thursday when I awoke from my slumber Gazza was still in bed and I went out for some grub and when I returned immediately guys started knocking on the door and I quickly realized our room will become ground zero ! My game is at 4 and the Goons play two games to catch up for their late arrival ....we played the Liverpool Saints from Sydney who we knocked out in semi final last year so this could be a winnable game for us ? Well we thought so until the game started and we put our worst foot forward and went down early and never even really challenged our opposition at all .... our team is falling apart at every position and the chances of even winning a game are dwindling fast ! It’s hard to blame everyone since we have nobody here to lead the squad and we are literally just going through the motions now and just making the most of things ... it also doesn’t help that the level of this tournament has gone up from last year and we haven’t done much to keep up with the rest of the teams as we added random skaters instead of recruiting players that could actually help . Our organizer didn’t even put a deposit for us or anything , didn’t book rooms and honestly we should have changed our team name since nobody was from Alaska and that isn’t the North Pole anyways .... I guess you all realize how disappointing and weird it is to play for a team that the organizer has even ditched ! I’ve never experienced anything like this and I doubt anyone else has ? Feel free to share your stories if you’ve been in this position . Like I said earlier I know we were shutout in one of the games and I think it might have been this one .... what I know for sure is that I gave up 5 goals in every game after the first match . Yup that didn’t feel good and honestly I wouldn’t have blamed anyone if they skipped the rest of the games because we were playing some hopeless hockey but at least nobody was blaming anyone and we just accepted it all . Can’t win em all eh ?

I worked the bench on Thursday for both Goons games as they were having issues with the low ceiling over the bench . You can’t do line changes over the boards without risking clocking your head off the concrete .... every team should have someone working the doors ! I was the guy for the Goons and I didn’t have to play so I had beers and enjoyed hanging around the rink ! This was my crazy night out and I ended up hitting up a wicked bar down the street that was called White Oaks or something .... this place became a club and honestly they were serving some kickass gin and tonics and I got blitted... the whole night after the first bar is a blank and the next morning I had to figure out what , where and why did I do things ... how did I wreck my knee and why do I have a bruise on my chest . I looked at the team chat and found out I went out for a drunken scooter 🛴 ride and that didn’t end well ... apparently I walked into a casino with blood rolling down my legs and played some blackjack (I don’t gamble) and I might have visited a few adult clubs which I found out more about the next night which is the big tournament party at Strats which is a biker type of strip joint . It’s where the dirties are lol !