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The All China Games Beijing 2008 have come and gone and the Dalian Wolfhounds have enjoyed their most successful and enjoyable tournament so far in their brief history. Both our mens and ladies teams – the ladies in collaboration with Shenzhen and a couple of Shanghai renegades – brought home silverware to northeast China. The men won the Plate while the Ladies won the Bowl (and the dish ran away with the spoon).

The lads kicked off the tournament against a strong Beijing A outfit in the early morning drizzle and it was definitely our worst performance of the day. We froze and never really got going but despite that were only a couple of scores behind a Beijing team that would ultimately go all the way to the Cup Final.

In the second game the Wolfhounds finally showed their teeth as they comprehensively outplayed Shanghai’s B team. That left us faced with a crunch match against Hong Kong in what was undoubtedly by far the tougher of the two groups. The Wolfhounds fought hard against Hong Kong and missed a number of glorious goal opportunities before finally going under by a score of 1-7 to 1-5.

Into the plate semi-final we went where Beijing B were well beaten by a team featuring our three Chinese heroes – Song, Stone and Aaron - all playing starring roles. In the plate final Dalian comfortably defeated the Beijing Legends team with goals from Steve Hashim, Steve Rowland and two from Duane Bhasin.

All 13 members of the squad played brilliantly and everyone saw loads of game time. Andy played amazingly well in goals all day with some stunning saves allied to flawless distribution to say nothing of his graceful charge forward in the final. Over the course of the day James, Song, Mikey, Aaron and Bob all defended well and ensured that anyone who scored against us would earn the honour and get some bruises in return. Indeed Song might have revolutionized throw in tactics with his now legendary Blind Mans Buff move!

Midfield was where lots of running was done and most of it was done by Steve Hashim, Levi and Mikey. All three covered enormous amounts of ground both in attack and defence.

Our forwards performed brilliantly. Jake was always a threat. Duane bagged a whopping seven goals. Stone weaved his magic and scored a fantastic chipped goal in the semi-final. Steve Rowland grew into the game as the day progressed and by the end was making runs and kicking points like a complete natural. Emiliano returned from injury to play his part and would have scored a wonder goal if he could have figured out with which limb of his body to hit the ball.

And then there was beer….

So all round an amazing weekend for the Wolfhounds mens team. It’s fair to say we have established ourselves as a force in Chinese GAA and the hope is now that we can kick on from here and grow stronger and stronger.