We Do Adventure

We have a floorball team here in Jajce. That is unusual. Although I'd never heard of the sport until I arrived in this country it's not one of the main sports here. Football undoubtedly claims that prize, although handball, basketball and volleyball would all give it a good run for its money. While floorball may be largely undiscovered here, as it is in the UK, it's huge in Finland. The couple of times I've been there it was the only sport I saw kids playing in the streets, unless you count cycling, which they do a lot of too. When I heard our team had been drawn against a Finnish side in an international floorball tournament hosted in Banja Luka this weekend I was a little concerned. Concerned that we would be on the receiving end of a lesson that our young team might take a little too harshly. There is, after all, no shame in being beaten by people who may have been playing the game longer than some of our team have been alive! I made sure I mentioned this per...

On Saturday Jajce's Lavovi (Lions) bit back at the BiH Floorball League tournament in Tuzla. At least they did in the first game they played. The last time the Lavovi played Gladijator from Prijedor the game was a 4-4 draw. This time we won by a surprisingly comfortable 6-2 margin. Anyone who read our post about the first tournament will probably have noticed the kit change since then. Out go the 70s-style short-shorts of the hand-me-down outfits and in comes a freshly purchased strip with the team badge on the front and “Floorball Club Lavovi Jajce” in big text on the back between the shoulder blades. Sadly new kit and the feel-good factor of getting a first tournament win wasn't enough to guarantee a result in our second game of the day. I never played enough competitive sport in the UK to speak authoritatively on cultural differences but I was surprised that on a day when the lowest scoring game featured six goals our team's faces clearly showed they thoug...

This is Lavovi Jajce (Jajce Lions) all smiles before our first game in the new BiH Floorball League. That's me second from the left. Saturday was the first of four tournament days we'll compete in this year. Hopefully we'll do better at the competing bit next time. We lost a closely fought first match 3:2, with the winning goal coming in the dying seconds. However, for reasons I won't go into here, we for ourselves 2:0 down in about as many minutes at the start of the second game. Our opponents in this game go by the name Gromovi, which translates as Thunder. There's no thunder without lightning, and although they say this never strikes twice we were on the end of a brutal 12:2 thrashing. In the words of Yazz : the only way is up!

Back when I was in my late teens and early twenties "No Fear" was a very cool clothing brand and "No Fear" posters were a must have for any adventure sports enthusiast's bedroom wall. I remember having one of an extreme skier bursting off a cliff edge. "If you're not living on the edge you're taking up too much space" declared the bold text. A friend had a T-shirt that asserted: "2nd place is the 1st loser." Yesterday, in a bitterly cold sports hall in Fojnica, our floorball team went some way to proving otherwise. We were taking part is a short six-way tournament between teams from Sarajevo and Fojnica. Each club had divided their squad into two. We had Jajce 1, featuring our strongest, fastest, players and Jajce 2, featuring the rest of us! We should have realised things were going to be a bit strange when Jajce 2 recorded a 7-0 win in its first match of the tournament. I think Jajce 1 felt they had to get at least one 8-0 score...