Observations & Opinions / Week Seventeen
Harold Abrahams – Senior Correspondent for TSS
Two Saturdays ago, a high-flying Bern team rolled into Cortina with dreams of a spotless 18-0-0 mark and – of course – with an ambition to post only the 3rd Tyrol Cup-winning campaign with that rarest of records – the 19-win achievement. The Armed Bears won the title in 2020 to move into sole third place with their 11th Cup, and boast a skilled and fleet stable of young players. A veritable irresistible force.
But recall the second half of that adage, and remember that Cortina are, how quickly we forget, the defending holders of the Cup – their 7th, thank you very much – and winners of the Hofer, Tor and Menger Medals last year – the only club to claim three such end-of-season honors. The Riflers defend their meadow as fiercely as any team does, and they are struggling to earn the third playoff position and retain the Cup. They needed the win more desperately than did Bern, and they felt, as Cortina’s Center Frankie Russo said, “that Bern, great as they are, could be slowed and even stopped, by a defense committed to winning a low-scoring contest. That is what we, the Riflers, are built for.” There you go: an immoveable object.
And with current Tor Medalist (Defensive MVP) Marcello Rinaldi commanding an air-tight back line, Cortina handed the Armed Bears an 8-5 loss. I would wager that Bern and Vienna (playing with verve in an easy 28-18 win over a fine Grenoble team) – secure in holding playoff positions – are hoping that their Italian neighbors do not join them in vying for the Cup.
That was on Saturday, March 1.
And then … well … Saturday, March 8. The Bears returned to Bern and were determined to regain the habit of winning as the brief playoff season nears. However, the Composers had some designs of their own, and Captain Nicolas Irmiger was the best player on the field in a comprehensive trouncing of the suddenly vulnerable-seeming Bears. Irmiger, a surprise contender for the Klammer and Purtscheller Medals, scored two fine skots as the Composers ran riot, 30-13, leaving the fans in the Swiss capital disheartened and the Bern squad knowing they may well face this same Viennese outfit in a few weeks for the Tyrol Cup.
Vienna, one can argue, is the cultural capital of Europe: more precisely, no one can argue that Vienna is not the world capital of classical music: Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Schubert, Brahms all called this elegant city home. The Composers – the players, not the musicians – proudly embrace that heritage with their very team name. All lovers of Wiesespiel remember the legend of the first Goose Day match, when they hosted Klagenfurt and expected to teach their rural guests (“the farmhands”) how to play this new game (that the Wyrms co-invented!). The visitors humbled Vienna 26-3, and, perhaps because of that early outcome, there has always been a sense that players from Vienna foster a culture of finesse and sophistication rather than brawn and force; the first are great qualities in an artist but less useful when facing sturdy opponents on a Saturday afternoon on a Meadow.
This year’s Composers team belies that old reputation; their defenders are beefy yet fast, and they don’t mind suffering a bloody nose or a broken collarbone in pursuit of their first title since 2013. Given the outcomes of the past two weekends, who would claim that the 15-2-0 leaders of the Tyrol League – called the Disarmed Bears by a few facetious voices among the Viennese contingent watching the (mis-)match – are a more solid choice to win the Cup than any of Vienna, Grenoble or Cortina?
But, after all, Bern is the team of the season, Mule Brunner has every hope of snatching a medal or two from Paul Lackner’s iron grip, and they will play at home for the Tyrol Cup in three weeks. No such comforts present themselves to the woeful Munich Lederhosen, who were driven around their own Meadow like chaff before a gale by an impressive and ascendant Grenoble team, 26-8. The Gantiers, traditionally the strongest French team and holder of 7 Cups, have relied in recent years on their brilliant wing, Henri Tissier, the “Comet,” whose speed knows few matches in this – or any – sport (let’s talk Lackner, Tissier, Kitzbühel’s Claus Binder and a few other fleet of foot runners into a footrace someday!). But this year, La Comete has support in the form of Gate Pierrick Yves and the towering figure of Gabriel Dubois, and the Glovers are one win away from joining that exclusive three-team fraternity which will battle for the giant prize: the Tyrol Cup. Tissier, with 9 points and the well-earned applause of the fair-minded German fans, stands ready to finish third in the Klammer Medal race for the third year running.
Without wishing to pin Munich’s stunning collapse and pending relegation (they are six points out of 9th, far behind an unremarkable Füssen Triskelions team – never mind hoping to cling to 8th place) on one man, it’s instructive to note the commitment and joy with which Tissier played as a counter to the display from Jurgi Hawksteader, the “Wunderkind” who, two seasons ago, was denied the Klammer only through the transcendent talent that is Paul Lackner. This season …? Where is the storming power of the Hawk? His effort represents the slack and slump-shouldered attitude one sees in the Lederhosen team as a whole.
After this correspondent’s father was stationed in Salzburg as a representative of the government of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II (God bless her!), I had the chance to grow up amid jaw-dropping beauty and to encounter the magnificent Meadow Game. As a boy, I read TSS and memorized the scores of matches, the statistics piled up by legendary players, the records and standings of each team and each league. Numbers. All numbers.
And still I revel in those glorious scores, statistics and standings.
Last week – on Match Day 16, my hometown Edelweiss’ opponent scored 15 points, and the Flowers won by 5. This week, Salzburg’s opponent scored 15 points, and the Edelweiss wilted, 15-7.
Last week, there were three one-point matches and one tie.
This week, there was one one-point match and three ties.
This week, a suddenly invincible Zurich – reborn as the Tirggel – combined with the Black Eagles to score 45 points in sunny but very cold Zermatt, outdistancing the Eagles by 7.
Meanwhile, in Ebensee, the Salters and Villach managed 8 points, with the Huts claiming a 5-3 win.
In Interlaken, Spittal made a wild, improbable comeback from down 22-8 with 17 minutes remaining to win their 4th match in succession, pushing across the winner with perhaps 30 seconds left on the clock … and we all know that Swiss clocks are always accurate. Their 23-22 win propelled them above the Yodelers in a madly jumbled Alpine League that is trying to sort itself out. The Schuhplattlers, remember, won the Wheat League two seasons ago with a lovely 15-0-3 mark, promoting to this selfsame Alpine League alongside the Aggsbach White Canons, and this correspondent, always enchanted by the stories of the Original Eight teams, cannot but hope that Spittal earns its way back into the Tyrol League. Now, four wins in a row cannot equal Spittal’s proudest moment in AL history: the famed 3-2 victory over Villach in the 1885 Tyrol Cup Final, but no town in Austria is more enamored of its team right now than are the Schuhplattler faithful.
But the search for the claimant to the title of the zaniest match of the week takes us, as it often does, to the Wheat League, where Chur, posting a playoff-bound season, visited Leoben. The Winemakers and Miners offered feats of derring-do for several thousand delighted fans, with the home-standing side knotting the game at 29-29 with 6 long minutes remaining; after 58 points tallied at break-neck pace, neither team could manage a final point, and the players laughed and traded stories as they left the Meadow to raucous, appreciative applause.
Last note for the week, faithful readers of the grand old Tiroler Spaß Schreibtisch:
Trento fought its way to the top of the teeming masses of the Alpine League with one match left, sitting at 10-6-1 and 31 points. After the Dolomites, though – chaos. Mayhem. Pandemonium!
The Hahnenkamms and Spittal are sitting on 28 points, Interlaken has 27, Lucerne has 26, Eisenerz and Vaduz both have amassed 25 points, and Zillertal will fall short of the playoffs at 24. But … look at that table again: 17 matches played by each team, and seven teams (7!) are within four points of each other. Ah, Madness!
Ah, Wiesespiel!