The International Jugger Blog

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."

Addendum: The Jugger book is also available in Black & White print, at Lulu Marketplace, for small budgets. But be assured, the color print looks much, much better ...

After days and days of translating, layouting, picture-cmyking, typesetting, typesetting, typesetting and a lot of furious cursing, I managed to get the first book on Jugger translated - with loads of new, stunning action shots, a detailed pomfey making step-by-step guide (now with pictures as well) and news on the international section. Here we go: "Jugger. A post-apocalyptic sport for all occasions"!

Thanks to Adam Horsten of Jugging Brisbane who did a thorrough proofreading and who was a great help with Jugger terminology, the book may now be purchased at Lulu (it will be available via amazon as well soon, but it does not always have to be the big fish who gets the worm, should it?). Of course, it is not cheap - 110 pages in full-color print do cost a bit ... but this is not my fault, to avoid all suspicion: I am earning incredible 31 cent (as in "small change", not as in "percent") share per issue sold; except if you buy it directly at Lulu's, where I get a bit more. Bahamas, here I come!

I hope that the book may help a bit in spreading the fascination for this unique sport. It would be a pleasure to play versus
British (especially for the Irish, I assume ...), Canadian and US teams as well, and maybe even all the many others who might not be that proficient with German but with English.

Any publisher who is interested in printing this title may contact the German publisher, Verlag an der Ruhr (rights at verlagruhr dot de) for licensing. As soon as that happens, the title will no longer be available via the current printer, of course.

Ruben Philipp Wickenhäuser: Jugger. A post-apocalyptic sport for all occasions, Morrisville 2008, 29,95€, ISBN 13: 978-1-40922920-9 (soon to be applied) - details and ordering. Website support will be online soon.