Hungarian Hockey Fans

The IIFC came to Sapporo to hold the B pool round robin tournament that would decide who attends the big show coming up in Canada in a couple of weeks. What did this mean? Some pretty good international hockey right here in Sapporo where we would have our choice of seats for incredibly cheap and be able - no, encouraged - to bring our own beer into the arean with us! Being the good Canadians that we are, we felt it was our patriotic duty to attend.

We watched a couple of games on Wednesday, the first one was a sleeper, but the second game was really fun to watch. Japan versus Hungary, two well matched teams, good physical play and a couple of home town boys on the team (the team captain is Canadian and so is the coaching staff and another player). Japan didn't manage the win in the end, which meant that the only remaining undefeated teams were Hungary and Ukraine.

On Saturday we returned to the arena, this time mixed in with the Hungarian fans (the woman I bought most of my furniture from is Hungarian and got us a couple of seats in the team Hungary section) to watch the deciding match - Hungary vs Ukraine. It was another great game and loads of fun to be part of the rowdy section. Hungary won the match and were thrilled to be heading off to Canada for the top tournament.




Shawn and another friend of ours thought it was important to properly congratulate the team (and they noticed that there was virtually no security at the rink preventing lunatic fans from storming the ice) so they went out onto the ice to join the postgame celebration. They were pretty proud of themselves because not only did they get their mugs into a few photos with the winner's plate, they also made it into the dressing room to chat with the players while the press waited outside. They didn't stay long, but did get a souvenier for their efforts, a team manager gave them each a Hungarian Hockey Association collectors pin.