The Tartan Army fly the Saltire at Eurobowl!
- Jock Wright
- Oct 27
- 7 min read
Scotland send record-breaking thirty-one coaches to Budapest
With a record-breaking thirty-one Scottish coaches making their way to Budapest a couple of weekends ago for Eurobowl XVI there was a real sense of anticipation for a fun-filled weekend whilst competing hard against coaches from all over Europe and even further afield.
Team Scotland went to compete in Eurobowl against twenty-nine other nations with the ambition of bringing home hosting rights for Eurobowl XVIII scheduled for 2028 - a mission that’s been more than a decade in the making.
Team Lithuania, competing in only their second Eurobowl, captained by Fuel and sporting world class coach, Mankiz, in their line-up amongst other solid coaches were determined to win hosting rights to bring Eurobowl to Vilnius. So would Lithuania shatter the decade long held dream or would Scotland, captained by BB_Jock steal his nerve to finally lead the team across the line?
Scotland had two squads in the Open - Team Scotland and Scotland Futures (aspiring potential future caps), whilst there were several Scottish squads forming something of a Tartan Army competing against one-hundred and forty teams - the largest Europen in history.
However before the dice were rolled, as is custom, there’s an opportunity to take in the sights of the host city, sup some beers with coaches not seen for a year, and make new friends who’ll no doubt be seen in Poland next year. Team Scotland took the lead and set-up the bar space on Thursday night where the wider Tartan Army kicked the revelry off as coaches from all over the world descended on the city.
Friday night saw the wider Team Scotland of sixteen get together to break bread and enjoy some Hungarian fayre, including the almost obligatory goulash! With the first round draw for the Bowl delivering a round draw against France for the second year-in-a row a lot of the conversation was how we’re going to eke out the marginal gains to pull something from the match against the reigning Eurobowl Champs.
Thanks to our generous hosts, Matt - Timebandit, and the team
Before we get lost down the rabbit hole of what happened blow-by-blow I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Matt - Timebandit, and all of his team who were fantastic hosts for the weekend. They promised to deliver the largest Eurobowl event in history and they duly delivered an incredible experience, which I hope will see the Scots who were in attendance encouraged to go to Warsaw next year off the back of this.
Team Scotland get off to the slowest start possible in the Bowl
For a nation seeking hosting rights after starting this quest ten years ago, drawing France in the first round for the second year-in-a-row was not the draw we were looking for. However it was what it was and we set about the task of building the game plan for trying to get something from the game, which had been talked about over dinner the night before.
Whilst the 6.5 vs 1.5 points scoreline suggests a walkover for the French it didn’t feel like that deep into the second half. All the games were pretty much in draw territory, but sadly when the chips came down it was in favour of the much more fancied French squad. They marched on with Bon Chance ringing in their ears as we wished them well for their quest of the back-to-back defence of Eurobowl.
Round Two we had drawn Slovenia and on paper this felt like a decent opportunity to get off the mark with them being a younger Eurobowl nation and a smaller Blood Bowl Community. The Slovenian’s sporting great smiles, and fantastic team shirts, in the style of baseball jerseys, however, were not so keen to help Scotland get on their way to challenge for hosting rights.
Going down the line at half-time trying to capture the state of affairs I was greeted with the very grim picture that we were significantly down on several boards, and nowhere near enough games in our win column to come away with anything but the prospect of a round loss was a sobering moment as skipper.
I pressed a few of our coaches to go for broke including Camelchops on Skaven, and Loki on Vampires. However when all was said and done it was a round loss, deservedly won by Slovenia 5 vs 3 points. Across sixteen games I was sporting our only board win over the two rounds having had a thoroughly enjoyable game against M1le, Slovenia’s captain.
As captain, this felt like a very low moment in the weekend for me - and I’m sure the rest of the team were no doubt feeling pretty down based on their results so far. We’d put in all this effort over the year, worked hard on the game plan, but when it came to the crunch we were a long way from pulling in the results.
What made things worse was that the Lithuanian’s had pulled off a big win against fancied Switzerland in Round One with a close 4.5 vs 3.5 points victory. However in a small chink of light for Scotland’s hope Lithuania had not managed to get past Austria who’d beaten the Lithuanians 5 vs 3 points with no draws across the eight boards!
Team Scotland in the Open get off to a flyer
Over in the Open Team Scotland enjoyed that age old classic of travelling all the way to Budapest to meet fellow Scots, ‘3 Scots and token English’. The Scotland team did their job proficiently easing past their opponents 2.5 vs 1.5 points to secure the win and were showing no signs of stage fright as they marched into Round Two.
… And marching right into Team Wales - a tough draw, where the Welsh would have been keen to exact revenge from a round loss at the hands of Scotland at this year’s UKTC. However the Scots were not in a charitable mood to their fellow celts as the team held the line taking a strong 3 vs 1 points victory and the prospect of a clean sweep of wins on day one of the tournament into round three.
This isn’t the Europen for nothing, Round Three delivered Team Austria, who were well known to the Scots. Umberto had recently visited Ayr, when on holiday, to play in Dominion’s two-dayer and JB, an old friend of Jock’s, was on the squad too. This wasn’t going to be straightforward, but it sure would be fun!
JB put the only loss on VMCat’s scorecard for the weekend putting the Scots’ backs against the wall. However this is a team sport with Blitzy and Talonbay confirming wins and i_done_goofd securing the draw to get the team win across the line! Three rounds, three wins standing in fifth was an impeccable start to their Europen!
Scotland’s Futures had a tougher day having recording an opening round win against Valhalla Utd. they then bounced into the impeccably dressed Halkflem Globetrotters Red in Round Two, who’d they played at The Home Nations in the summer. This was then followed by a meeting with Lutece Noobz in Round Three - sports fans who follow European Blood Bowl will know they’re definitely not new to the game! So the Futures finished 1-0-2 for day one having putting in a sterling effort and having fun doing it.
Round Three - Team Scotland meet the hosts, Hungary, and get off the mark!
I definitely felt as Captain it was time to earn my corn. Gathering in the team for the post-match huddle at lunch we’d tried to find the positives, and tweaked the game plan to see if we could receive more kick-offs to increase the likelihood of draws, lessening the losses whilst hoping we could nick a couple of wins to secure the rounds.
Encouraging the guys to keep their heads lifted, we knew Lithuania had drawn a tough Round Three against Team Italy, winners of this year’s Home Nations and one of the big nations fancied to do something special pre-tournament. So we had to hope Italy would put up a stout defence.
Meanwhile we had the honour of drawing the host nation, Hungary, who were genial hosts across the board presenting the team with a traditional Hungarian drink. We were in no doubt, camped out on the bottom table of Eurobowl, this round was very much in must-win territory or hosting rights would be on their way to Vilnuis.
Everything clicked with Scotland romping home with five wins and no losses taking the tie 6.5 vs 1.5 points! We needed that to salve the pain from the first two rounds. Hat tip to the Hungarians, gracious hosts, who wished us well in our quest for hosting rights.
Before making an exit for dinner and drinks we were eager to discover the outcome of Lithuania against Italy - a draw! Another incredibly strong result for Fuel and his team tying with one of the big nations of Eurobowl meant they were on 1-1-1 at the end of the Day One and Scotland was a whisker behind on 1-0-2.
So after a rough start Scotland were down, but not out. There would be an opportunity to pick ourselves off the canvas with the aim of chasing down Lithuania for those hosting rights on Day Two. Saturday night saw some of the squad go for pizza and talk naturally turned to round four with the draw released that evening.
Tune in for the second part of Team Scotland's Eurobowl adventures tomorrow!
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