This weekend was filled with fun and excitement.  LRB Chicks (B) went on a massive adventure – travelling to Munich for a bout against the Rolling Rebels!  We have close ties with Munich because one of our own Birds has flown our coop, back to her hometown, and helped found the Rolling Rebels.

We’d been preparing for this for months, so we were all a little anxious and a bit bouncy with anticipation.  We’ve bouted against Munich before, hosting them in Liverpool for the win.  Of course we were hoping to do that again, but first we had important preparations to make. We arrived on Friday afternoon, and began those preparations.  Mostly involving Gigantic Beers:

And absolutely enormous plates full of delicious Bavarian dishes, with an extra helping of fleisch:

This was all a precursor to the event of the next day, the bout!

At the first whistle, Munich showed how tough they were going to prove to be.  The first half had the Chicks on the defense from the start, and our jammers were taking a battering from Munich’s amazingly strong walls.  It took the Chicks nearly the whole first half to find our stride.  We battled back from some confusing plays and situations to put up some points, but at the half Munich still held an impressive lead.

In the second half, we felt we found our footing a bit more.  Our walls came together, our jammers got through more frequently.  Our blockers used their offensive moves bit more often.  But don’t let our improvement fool you; Munich is a damn tough team and we fought for every bit of improvement we got.  It was not enough in the end, with Munich taking the win with a comfortable point spread.

Our takeaways from this bout will be that we work so well together when we get into our zone, but we will also be taking lessons back to practice to improve ourselves each week.  Munich is a gorgeous city, we loved exploring it, and the Rolling Rebels may well be our favourite team to lose to.  Their hosting was thoughtful and gracious, and we never wanted for information, ideas, directions, or food!  We really felt the derby love this weekend, and can’t wait to spend more time with our friends from the Munich Rolling Rebels!