The International Jugger Blog

Next week-end, the 3rd German Open/15th German Championships will take place in Berlin, on the former Tempelhof Airfield. It is the biggest Jugger event that has ever taken place, by far:

62 teams have registered to take part in the upcoming event, plus 4 more who will compete in the Youth Jugger mini tournament. Even better, Spain is sending four teams, Australia will be there with two (including the Redbacks) and Ireland takes part with Setanta again.

More information is available ⇒ on the website of the Jugger e. V.

Discussion takes place ⇒ at the Jugger Forum.

We are quite sure there will be lots of pictures for those who can't take part in this great event, and certainly there will be some video footage as well.



Photo: Andreas Naurath, cc nc-by-sa

2011 passed like a flash. Yet many things have happened that I would call remarkable in the Jugger world:

Item. Development in Spain.

The Spanish community is growing even stronger. Spain held an International Tournament. Galicia has posted a nice intoduction on its Association on Jugger at the IJB, showing the high spirits for the sport.
Also there had been an unpleasant, yet important discussion on a spanish team that had symbols and names associated with the fascist movement Falange, leading to a declaration at the IJB and at other places against such ideologies.

Item. Development in the U.S.
U.S. Jugger developed further to a stable sport Jugger community, also it might be the country with the most different ways of (current) Jugger styles.

Item. Development in Germany.

The re-formed Jugger League has made its second year now.

For the first time, the German Championships have not been held in Berlin, but in Waidhaus, Bavaria.

The Ostdeutsche Winterliga has started (East German Winter League games). For a detailed description, see Jugglers Jugg.

The Jugger e. V. Berlin has now its own official training grounds at the former Tempelhof Airport airfield.


Item. Miscellaneous Jugger stuff in Germany.

The Jugger-Wiki has been set up by Nalf and Uhu and is expanding as a good resource on the sport (only in German yet, sorry). Editors welcome.

Inspired by Munchkin(r), Falco jugger player Leo initiated an own card game called "Pompfkin". Get it for free at the web page of team Falco jugger.

The (up to my knowledge) first printed issue of a fanzine has been published and released at the 14th German Championships. It is still ready for download.

A patch was made by Falco jugger for those teams who expressively do not want to play in a highly structuralized Leauge but have sportive ambitions nevertheless, "Jugger libres".

Item. Uhus stuff.

The team I founded in January 2007 has had a very successful year, in all tournaments except Hamburg we got ranks 2-4. And even in Hamburg, we were part of the top one-third. The falcon is flying high!

Last, the first factbook on Jugger has been "freed", thus becoming a free-to-download ebook/PDF in English at uhusnest.

foreword: I hope this post is OK for all current editors of The International Jugger Blog. I felt it necessary because of some discussions, see below.

Fascism is not just another political point of view.
Fascism is not a joke.
Fascism is not history.
But well learn of fascist history.


Fascism, and its associated ideologies like Nazi/Neonazi ideologies, negates basic human rights. It is responsible for the death of millions of millions of people, in Germany alone for over 6.000.000 (!) Jews being murdered just for their belief, or just for being what they were; in addition to so many others murdered for their belief, sexual orientation or political engagement. Look it up in the history books.

There is no way we can tolerate such an ideology. This is not a matter of left-wing bearings or similar. This is a duty to anyone respecting human rights.

Politics should not be intermixed with sport. But especially in extremist tendencies, an intermixing is inevitable. So "Politics has nothing to do with sports" does not solve, merely ignore the problem in this case. And ignoring all too quickly equals accepting.

The International Jugger Blog hereby states that it, as well as anyone posting entries on it (at least after 11-24-2011), declares that he or she stands for tolerance, democratic tenets and human rights.
The founder and chief editor of the Blog, Uhu, in November 2011

Examples for images for web pages (click to enlarge), CC nc-sa 3.0 (for more logos etc., see the Jugger Wiki):





You will find this post as a permanent page at http://juggerblog.net/index.php?/pages/jugger_vs_fascism.html .
--
Reason for this declaration is a discussion on a Spanish Jugger team, ⇒found here at the Jugger forum.

The rise of German-style, European Jugger began in October of 2010, in the small and historic town of Marietta, Ohio by Wess Apshaga-Meaux. He had been a fan of The Blood of Heroes movie since seeing it in the early 1990s but had no idea it was being played for real as a sport until he ran across German and Australian videos online.

Within a week, he had made two complete sets of pompfen (including chains), a mock dog skull and goals. By the following week he had the first Jugger game in that part of the world organized and "Jugger Ohio" was born.

Utilizing social media to plan everything, weekly Jugger matches continued to draw people both of a young and of an older demographic. This use of social media also allowed Jugger Ohio to communicate with the handful of other Jugger groups spread out over the USA as well as groups worldwide.



Wess and Jugger Ohio, with the help of Chad McCann of Oklahoma City's Red Dirt Jugger Club, organized the first ever American Jugger tournament. Two teams from Oklahoma traveled over 1,000 miles (1,682 km) to compete against two teams from Ohio in the innagural tournament, "The Dogskull Classic". The hosting team, The Marietta Murder prevailed as the winning team and the first official American Jugger Champions.






Though still a small community compared to elsewhere in the world, the American Juggers are very dedicated to the promotion and growth of the sport we all love so much!



Contact Jugger Ohio via their facebook page by searching for "Jugger Ohio" or email us at jugger.ohio@gmail.com


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((/ Note of the Moderator, please clear [IMG] tags to display pictures properly, and set width="450", thanks))

My personal favorite as Jugger photo of the year 2011. Taken by Linus.



And here, the truly awesome video Linus made at the Berlin Masters this year (iframe):

Finally, it is done: After having prepared a layout for the Jugger fanzine, I decided over night that it might be just the time to do what I had planned long before: To publish the English translation of the first Jugger book for free, as a PDF file.

→ Free download of the Jugger book, beta version

What you will get right now is a quick-and-dirty beta version of the book.
I wanted to make it available now, so please forgive me
spelling and translation errors. The content will be revised at the next update (including the history section).

Yet I depend on your help. It would be great if you could contribute details on your different ways in playing Jugger compaired to the German version, so I can include your "national" rules into the update of the book and make it more international. The book is not meant as a "so you have to do it", but just to give an insight on German and other countries Jugger and inspire own ways of playing.
So, the International section is designed to grow, but since I simply lack time, it is still quite small at the moment.
Also, any reviews are very very welcome! Just keep in mind that it is a beta "quick shot", since I had to re-design the complete layout (due to legal reasons).

Please refer to http://jugger.uhusnest.de/en_juggerbook.shtml as the download location, since I haven't decided about a final publisher for the free version yet (the link at uhusnest will be updated while the deep link to the file itself will soon be out of date).

If you have good experiences with a publishing platform for such an English handbook, please drop me a note! It must be free to use, and must accept PDF files as well as file revisions (deleting the old file and replacing it with the update). Also, copyright has to remain by me re. the photographers.

Greetings jugger warriors!
I am pleased to announce the “Galician Association of Jugger”, born in December of 2010 in the city of “A Coruña”, Galicia (northwestern Spain).

As many other associations, communities or groups about jugger, we seek to play and expand this awesome sport around our homeland, hoping one day we can reach a high level of players and teams to make several tournaments, leagues and other competitions and activities.
Along with our jugger partners in Spain, we also wish to see the birth of a "Spanish Federation of Jugger", (actually been cradled for a, maybe, near future).

It’s been a hard path since December 2010 (especially if everyone knows nothing about jugger) but at last we succeeded. In May 2011 we were celebrating a historical point of our association: after participating in an exhibition called “ExpOtaku” we reached near 150 different players in just 9 hours of jugger sessions (near 210 players altogether). From this moment, teams became to appear and others began to be founded.
Nowadays we have lots of people interested but few teams really active and compromised with our organization (near 8); some others are still waiting to have more time and more teams near their cities and towns. This is the next big point we want and also need to improve.



This weekend, on 18th of September, we’ll be playing our first league among 6 teams. It will take near 5 or 6 weeks, playing six matches per Sunday, and we wish this to become our first quite big event where players can enhance their experience, training and of course enjoy playing and make friends (beer is also included!). The first step to a better future…


Visiting our website and forum you may find everything about us; you can watch some videos and pictures and read about our activities, events, tools tutorials, rules and teams as well.

Feel free to contact us in jugger.galicia@gmail.com (preferably in English; we also have one German speaker); I will be happy to assist you answering all your questions or even speak about future meetings and events among our beloved Europe.



Hope to meet you all in the “battlefield” someday. Best wishes from Galicia!
“Abur” / “Auf Wiedersehen” .

Signed: “Lébor Corbalis”,
Founder of the Galician Association of Jugger.
http://juggergalicia.comze.com/

A few weeks ago I heard of Jugger in Austria, espacially in Vienna so i asked them for an introduction and a few pictures and here is it all for you.

Sunday. 8pm.
3 friends rest from a long
battle in a greek restaurant. The waiter tries to understand the
story behind a handful of battered people, having a bunch of taped
self-made weapons leaning at their table. Completely worn out with
marks, only a juggerian warrior could bear, they enjoy their first
served beer. And in the blink of an eye, all scratches, bruises and
tiredness dissolve in pure pleasure. Jugger Vienna most certainly
turned out to be one of the best sport experiences of all our team
members.

Well.. who startet that wonderful madness?? Two enthusiasts
from germany founded the first Austrian Jugger team in 2010. It never
stopped growing since. Compared to other Juggerians, our style might
be a little different. Why? Many reasons. For one thing, we have more
female players than male. There is an age variance, reaching from
young kids to parents and there is only one strict rule in our
colourful community: have fun to the fullest and treat everybody as
an equal.

You can find us taunting, fighting, running, tumbling,
succeeding and laughing in the parks of Vienna - mostly Praterwiese
and Donauinsel. We learned, that between slagliners, rugby players,
football artists and sun bathing beauties - Jugger always takes the
throne in attention! Give us enough weapons to equip all curious and
interested people - we could play at least 3 games at a time. Only a
couple of months passed since the first steps were taken, and each
and everyone of us became a believer in one of the best team sport
experiences ever. And every time we try to explain the magic of our
sundays to our clueless friends, there will be that moment in which a
mischievous smile flashes over our faces. That moment when all those
memories of amazing days we shared cross our minds. "Jugger?
Can't be explained. Must be played!!"

Here also a picture of the team ...

... and the two founders.

And if you want to contact the Jugger players in Vienna, this is they're E-Mail-adress: jugger.wien@gmx.at

After the first Fanzine (a fan-made, noncommercial magazine) on Jugger has just arrived here from the printers and just looks awesome (I mean the print quality, the content is up to you to judge) I decided that there has to be a second issue at the 3rd German Open next year!

I would like to invite you to write an article about Jugger, or aspects of Jugger, or a great tournament in your country, or on your way of playing, Pompfen making, whatever! Just grab the pens!

As for the length, it should be less than 3,000 characters, something like 1,000 would be perfect – yet more or less will not be a problem. Also, I would love to include pictures to your article (even if it may be just one).

If you could write a short synopsis in English (just some sentences), the rest of the article may well be written in your own language!

So, I would love to get your articles, the sooner the better. Just send them to me, and if you don't have my mail adress, look up the user Ein Uhu at http://forum.jugger.org and contcat him