Small events in South Africa, England, Australia and Belgium

Johannesburg tournament - December 22, 2015

Christmas Challenge 2015 Report

Tuesday the 22nd of December saw the inaugural Christmas Challenge hosted at Sharonlea Manors. Five players, of which two were newcomers played some friendly and exciting table football with Boney M's Christmas music and the customary Christmas Tree twinkling in the background.
The trophy was a unique Father Christmas with a subbuteo playing figure and ball perched nicely on Santa Claus.
The two Ladies played a one-off final which proved to be goalless and led to an exciting penalty shoot-out.

Nita, Clifford's girlfriend; held her nerve and scored two classy goals to claim the Ladies Challenge Title.
Three men, with newcomer Bernard Higgins, contesting a double round of fixtures with the top 2 players progressing to the final. Bernard received a lot of coaching during his games and is keen to play again. The final was contested between Clifford and Martin. The latter was in fine form and progressed through the league stage undefeated. The final was a tight and close encounter, however both players showed good sportmanship highlighting the celebratory time of the year. Although both players had opportunities to clinch the title in normal time, a hoot-out was the only way to separate the finalists.
Clifford converted his first two shots and claimed the title by 3 goals to 1 and concluding a very enjoyable Christmas Challenge 2015.
Unique stunning keep trophies designed by Nita, were presented to the three visitors.

(Report by Clifford Graaff)

Coulsdon tournaments - December 18, 2015 and January 8, 2016

Coulsdon Subbuteo Club recently held 2 WASPA tournaments. The first one was a "promotional" tournament with a small turnout of four. Scott Freeman ended on top of the group with 6 points but more goals scored than Lee Fenton and Colin Lindsey. The three of them had 2 wins. The second event was a regional tournament with another turnout of four. This time Colin Lindsey took the honors with 1 win and 2 draws while Jonathan Lopez-Real and Lee Fenton was third.

Melbourne tournament - January 9, 2016

Maximising The Fun With The Smallest Turnout

In what seemed as an awkward time period with not many people available to play and scattered availability timeframes throughout the month, hosting a 3 man tournament provided some uncertainty as to how everyone will enjoy themselves in what would be a club record with the lowest attendance at a WASPA event. The old building was unlocked at 12:45pm and I slowly prepared one sole table in the small room. Brushed off the dust of the boxes and set aside the sheet covers from the boards and set up the board on the trestles, only to realise there were no screwdrivers in the storage boxes. The day looked finished before it even started since it looked impossible to screw in the goals onto the boards. Christos coming from Preston and Adam coming from Altona, 120 minutes of driving between them, I was sure they weren’t keen to play uncomfortably with loose goals on a board. Kicking the bucket looked like the only option. It just so happened to be that one other board had the feature of threading in a screw through the board and you can tighten it up with a walnut (which I forgot). Sometimes I worry too much over the smallest things honestly.

All three managed to get things underway, it was planned to play each other twice and then have a grand final afterwards. And of course time flew by with 4 hours of games. The dictator of MTFC proved to be unbreakable on the day with the iron curtain of defenders keeping the opposing strikers at bay throughout the tournament without a goal conceded. Christos had shown dramatic improvement on the other hand and pushed Adam to his limits with both players creating chances and unable to score, both games between them were tense affairs and anyone could have walked with a win.

Adam managed to finish second with a 0-0 draw against Luke in the very last game of the group stages. Adam progressed to the final without winning a game in which he jokingly commented it mirrored how the Irish progressed into the finals without winning a game. However the grand final ended much differently to the group games as Luke managed to go 2-0 up from a defensive error and the second from a looping deflection off Adam’s defender. Adam came very close to halving the deficit from a powerful shot which hit the cross bar and the rebounding off the keeper rod which was very unfortunate. The game eventually ended 3-0 in favour of Luke.

There really wasn’t any monkey business on the 9th of January, it was just purely a solid Subbuteo session on a Saturday afternoon where all 3 experimented different tactics, formations and attacking runs across the pitch. Strong sense of sportsmanship, maturity and learning curves on reconfirming as to how the game is supposed to be played. A lot to take in from Saturday and to top it off after the event, a league match was played between Christos and Luke, where Luke came out victorious however Christos finally managed to break through Luke’s defence and score a goal in which it finished 3-1.

(Report by Luke Radziminski)

Vresse tournament - January 10, 2016

Happy flickers

Due to 3 last minute dropouts, the small event in Vresse, in the Far South of Belgium, only had 3 players taking part. The other reason of the poor turnout was that the International Open of Eugies was taking place at the same time. After everyone played each other twice, Pascal Droeven won the final against Renaud Parisel to claim the title. There will be another WASPA event in Vresse in February but details are still to be confirmed soon.