5th of Janaury 2006, Erick Acker (Paris tournament organiser) forwards an email from Pierre in Scotland. Pierre is looking for french players to come and play a friendly scotland France in touch before the big game in murrayfield. A tournament in Scotland ?
Sounds crazy but why not…
This is how started the fantastic adventure of 10 players of ‘touch alsace’. 4 additional players of Touch Isere will come and join, helped by Philippe Platel.
On the 3rd of feb, just about a month later, Touch alsace is landing in Glasgow
After a night on scottish soil, trying to understand what « last order » means and doing our best at singing along songs from the beatles in a piano bar. We discover what hospitality and conviviality means in Edinburgh and leave to discover more of the city. 1st thing we see, less than 100 m from our flats, a pub at day.
Following recommendations we discover grassmarket and its well know pubs.
After visiting the Museum of Scotland (magnificent place, free -who said Scottish were cheap ?-), we finally meet Pierre after 3 weeks of email communication.
Try and guess : Is Pierre the one with the pint or with the bagpipe ?
Carry on the visit of the city, castle…
A bit of shopping….
Anyway, nobody will believe us. We go to arthur’s seat “are you mad, it looks really far”, “no no I promise it isn’t, trust me”. Curiosity wins and we are rewarded : fantastic view on the city
15:00 time to plan the games tomorrow and time for England / Wales. Let’s go to the pub !
Saturday night, several things… Which is best ? unsure…
- discovery of the word “spicy” (for Indian food !)
- meeting up with the 4 players from Grenoble amongst which the famous Yoann “the powder”
- british girls don’t seem to be cold and don’t need thermolactyl
- discovery of Espionage
coming out late of the latter, we realise dansing bare foot outside with a temperature of 3 deg is no problem as long as the music is good !
After quick meeting with Father Adams wandering about in the street, we go to bed for a well deserved rest. The next day was the big day : local breakfast is a must.
And we’re off to our tournament !
We find the players from Grenoble again.
And give Pierre some special wines from Alsace.
We get to the stadium, it’s getting serious…
Oh that’s nice, they painted the changing rooms blue, white and red for us
And first game against the first team from Edinburgh :
Touch Watt and its captain Peter
Not laughing anymore, wrecked on the knees…
For some reason we don’t quite remember the score but good atmosphere at the end of the game for the photo.
Second team from Edinburgh : a mix from the Meadow regular players, we won’t miss this one : Bordeaux wine and kiss to the captain
Nothing we can do, let’s try with our joker Thierry.
But still a bit too fast for us…
Last team is the “leopards” from Aberdeen and its famous and dynamic captain Graeme Buchan.
And the family photo…
Fantastic experience for all the players from Touch Alsace and unfortunately not enough time after the game due to the real Scotland / france in murrayfield. But something was born there and will report the party to the 3rd of June in Paris at the tournament organised by Erick since most of the 3 Scottish teams who played with us in Edinburgh will be there too.
The rest wasn’t as glorious for france but full of emotion for those who discovered for the first time the atmosphere of a 60000 people stadium and the famous “flowers of Scotland” preceded by a ceremony that will remain in everyone’s memory for a long long time.
To note : Touch Alsace participated in the record of the biggest human flag.
Fellow players, if you ever get a chance, do not hesitate to go to Scotland, Edinburgh is magnificent and the people are fab.
