46. TRI A new sport

A Far Cry from home

Tom after a week in Shanghai decided to head up to Beijing on a little adventure, with flatmate Sean also going on his travels to Thailand, I for the first time had the flat all to myself. After a week of late nights and early mornings I was exhausted.

However instead of sleep, approximately 12 hours of uninterrupted Far Cry 3 on the XBOX commenced.

Tom had left around 7pm on the Thursday I awoke from my island, stealth work slumber around 3pm on the Friday and met up with Darren to hand over some flashcards.

Darren’s suggestion

Over at Darren’s he suggested a game of tennis after each of our privates. I like tennis and  there was a court out in the garden part that looked up on the apartment blocks surrounding it.

Four hours later we were ready to play. In the mean time we'd both had private classes, bought rackets, waited for floodlights to come on and finally had told this incredibly hungry hooker who hung by the court that we had no proverbial food to give. She was strangely insistent though.

It was a magnificent arena to play. The apartments produced a perfect backdrop and allowed our cries to be echoed into the night air.

However, the court was clearly susceptible to rain, and as this un-seasonal weather descended the court soon turned into a muddy ice rink.

Alas, we played on with our TESCO’s finest rackets and balls and played out a set. A 6-2 score line proving that I still had it.

TRI this game out

I’ve been brought up on sport. England after all is the birthplace of most of the popular worldwide games nowadays.

However today I was to play a game that had a following of nationalities all around the world and was started up here in Shanghai.

The game is called TRI. It claims to be the first sport where three teams contest against each other at the same time on the same pitch.

The pitch itself is ring donut shaped. The aim of the game is to defend your lacrosse like net from attackers on either team whilst score in either of the other teams goals.

 The ball which you play with is the most bizarre. It’s an elongated American football pretty much. Its impossible to spin pass it. An Aussie Rules direct pass is the way to go and to shoot you toss the ball from behind your head.

The goal itself is 5 metres outside this pitch and you must throw the ball into it without going out of play. You are allowed to jump and throw it in mid air though.

Here they are on Facebook if you want to take a look

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-TRI-Federation/311913588822343?fref=ts

Jeremiah, who is spearheading the marketing, branding as well as production of equipment, invited me down. He wasn’t there when I arrived at the training ground, but I got to know a few of the people. I’ve got to say it was a bit of a motley crew with an array of different sizes and nationalities.

When the game started, which was basically a race into the centre circle, we only had 9 overall players (3 on each team). My first contact was to my knee as a Samoan at full speed ran into me with the ball. I’m not sure who came off worse but I was struggling. 

I  did not have a great first third partly due to my knee, unused to this new game and the hours of Far Cry had hampered my fitness. However we were winning! Thanks mainly to this English dude who despite his size was an absolute warrior. The scoring system is basically if you score you get +1 if you concede you get –1. The scores were something like +2, +1, -3.

In the second third, Jeremiah, who had arrived now, recruited some Chinese folk. The squads were now all full strength, 5 a side.

We had a strong third, keeping our lead and despite feeling absolutely exhausted, I was starting to get the hang of it. We led +2, -1, -1.

However in the break, an alliance was formed between the other two teams. How sick is that! However this meant that we now faced all 8 coming at our net. We had to hold on to possession and win possession by kicking the ball out and thus getting the kick off. However this meant that we would lose a player as 1 had to hold the ball as another kicked.

By the end of the game , the Samoan team had come back into it and had tied the match +1, +1, -2. We could have gone to a golden goal but instead went to a shootout.

This involved throwing the ball into the net from about 15 metres away. 1-1 after the first round, I was guilty of missing my one. However it came round to me on the sudden death second run through, and in true beginners luck style I struck the back of the net.

Honestly this game was quality. It has parallels with an array of sports, like rugby, basketball, Aussie rules, American football. It was no doubt physical but good camaraderie was shown by all players in this burgeoning sport.

The crazy thing is that there is a World Finals held on June 10^th consisting of 9 nations.

Pumped already!