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36 teams joined us at the 12th German Jugger Championships in Berlin. Even Ireland came to the tournament, Team Setanta.

Being the biggest Jugger event ever held in history, the teams were divided into eight groups with games on five separate pitches. The main pitch was equipped with galleries for numerous spectators, with Jugger League flags flapping in the wind. Weather on Saturday was perfect, sunny, but not too hot, whereas there was some moderate rain on Sunday (the Irish brought their weather with them, thanks) - no reason to stop playing.


The Irish Qwik during the Special Irish Weather Game Setanta vs. Falco jugger. Photo: Susanne Serwe

When Grünanlagen Guerilla, Berlin, former Champion, challenged Rigor Mortis, also from Berlin, in the 300 stone finals, emotions rose high. A very energetic game was met by enthusiastic spectators with choruses and screams, a stunning atmosphere indeed. Finally, Rigor Mortis beat GAG and won the German Championships trophy back.

Some excellent pictures are shown at flickr. And here is a first glimpse at one of the other games held at the main pitch. More to come!


Cranium Hunters Lüneburg versus Hannoverian Living Undeads.

For a report in German, please refer to Uhus finest-assorted Weblog Droppings.

This spring, we start the local Berlin Jugger League. With the Berliner Juggerpokal, a tournament for local teams, being staged for the third time, we thought it might be the right time to have a local league as well. And it will be excellent training - for players as well as for referees.

Every week-end, a pair of teams takes part in a challenge. Each challenge consists of separate games.
Each game lasts until a team scores 7 points (no stone count limit).
The team winning 3 games has won the challenge.
The results uncover the further pairings.

Teams participating:
Skúll (TSV Rudow)
Lluchse (TSV Rudow)
Rigor Mortis (jugger e.V.)
BSR (jugger e.V.)
GAG (jugger e.V.)
Falco jugger (jugger e.V.)
...

The Falcones44, a project of the Albert-Schweitzer-School Neukölln (9th grade), will only participate in the Berliner Juggerpokal.

We also changed the rule for staying down for Berlin.
When hit, a player gets down on at least one knee, takes one hand from his Pompfe and starts counting with the hand behind his back. As soon as he has finished counting (5/8 stones) and lifts the knee from the ground, he is allowed to strike - since he first has to grab his pomfey, there is no need for the artificial "get-up-don't-hit-time" we had before.

Let's look how it works...

PS. Also the step-by-step pomfey making PDF (in German, but lots of pictures) has been updated.

The first German Open of "League Jugger" were held in Berlin at the 13th/14th of September. The weather was excellent, about thirty teams came and fought for the dog skull.



The biggest surprise happened in the finals. Rigor Mortis, unchallenged for years except by the old Hamburg team, was beaten in a stunning game against Grünanlagen Guerilla. A Golden Jugg finished the game after a 10:10 skulls draw at 300 stones. Grünanlagen Guerilla never won a tournament game against Rigor before, along with all other Jugger teams except Hamburg ... now, with a new chain from the former team KSJ, they rocked the house.


Photo: Liquid Eye / Susanne Serwe
More pictures

Along with the Irish, the Australians seemed to have a really great time - also they were quite intrigued by some national traditions:
"The captain of the Irish team displayed a great rapidity of verbal output as well as great pride in his undergarments which he insisted on displaying down the field (a display which was returned with pride by one of the German qwiks later in the day)."
Also great was the game Australia vs. Ireland, played by a combination of Oz and Èire rules. The Oz Redbacks played with great enthusiasm and loved to beat up a German national team by playing by their own rules: The skull in the center circle, stakes, doubles and hits to the elbows and knees do not count as hits - a very fast game with long sequences of pomfey fighting, very different to German style Jugger, and very fascinating! As Adam put it:
"the experience of more than 100 Juggers yelling that chant is somthing that will be with all of us for a very long time."

Die Lüneburger möchten alle aktiven Jugger herzlich zur aktiven Teilnahme am neuen Jugger-Blog einladen, das kürzlich online gegangen ist. Dank einer redakteurbasierten Nutzerverwaltung (wie auch hier im internationalen Blog) können einmal angemeldete dort eigenständig Neuigkeiten schreiben.
Es findet sich dort schon ein Einblick in die geplante Trainingswoche im August.

Damit sind es nun drei in der Runde: Neben dem Jugger-Blog dieses hier für internationale Themen und mit der Jugger-Kategorie von Uhus finest-assorted Weblog Droppings das "älteste" seiner Art, das aufgrund der verwendeten lokalrechnerbasierten Software (Thingamablog) ein Einbenutzerblog ist.

Friends of jugger may look forward to 2008: This summer, at the 13th and 14th of September, all four active Jugger countries will be present at the Jugger Tournament 2008 in Berlin.
Denmark and Ireland want to come, and even Australia has put a team together and will travel all the way to challenge the German Juggers on the field! There might even join us someone from overseas, but that is not clear yet ...
Any other country putting a team together is of course very welcome to join us, too, just contact us, ideally via the international forum or Mail or PM to Ein Uhu for the international co-ordination or also Lester for Berlin-specific questions.

This will be the first truly world-wide Jugger tournament in history, so get prepared
As always, we (Berlin) will be able to provide accomodation for the tournament, but we also invite all Juggers to join our camp, which will be at the tournament grounds - this year had been excellent, with a nice barbecue evening and night-time "pompfing" ...






Berlin Tournament Grounds, 2007, Photo: (c) Hahn

I have edited the little, and very amateur, "What is Jugger"-vid further (for example, replaced the tournament clip by a better one), though it still lacks good footage; as soon as I get my hands on some (and have time), I will enhance it ... promised ... well, here is the preview.
Thanks to Brian "Sonic Clang" Kline for the excellent music, which he had originally written for Doom3.

EDIT: Here is the new version, 0.8a (added spoken comments)

Last saturday, the Berlin Juggers celebrated the first decade of the Jugger society in Berlin. The first tournament had been held at the Mauerpark in 1998. Now, ten years and ten tournaments later, the Jugger e.V. Berlin met at the c-base, the crashed space station, buried in the grounds below Berlin Mitte. In the flickering lights, surrounded by long-discarded control panels and abandoned alien technology, Jugger veterans and young warriors feasted, supported by two excellent live bands, slideshows with lots and lots of photos featuring Jugger over the years, and a selection of old and new Jugger videos. And once again, Lüneburg made the (quite long) way to us and joined into the event.

above: First Berlin Jugger tournament at the Mauerpark, 1998

It had been a great party. A moment to remember ...


The crashed space station

For our international readers:
You may use the link at the bottom-right corner of this entry to switch to the English version!
There is just a little bug, it should say "English, German" instead of "English, English".

Endlich ist es soweit: Nach einer ausführlichen Besprechung im Drachenblut-Forum ist nun dank dem Einsatz mehrerer Sportbegeisterter (oh Wunder, sogar aus Berlin und Hamburg
zugleich) das erste Jugger-Regelwerk als PDF verfügbar, das die Spiel-Optionen der meisten derzeit aktiven Städte mit einschließt. Wie es in der Natur der Sache liegt, wird sich auch dieses weiter erweitert werden, wachsen und sich verändern. Erst einmal ist dabei aber eine gute Übersicht und Grundlage geschaffen!

Das Layout ist auch noch nicht ganz perfekt, der Textwust stellte auf die Schnelle eine kleine Herausforderung dar ... also bitte keine Buchsatzansprüche ...

Wünsche wohl zu pompfen!