Barrelhouse RFC Amsterdam 7's Tour 2000

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Tour Report!

As promised here is the Barrelhouse Tour Report, my apologies for the delay but I have been waiting for my blood contamination levels to normalize and my memory to clear, which it has somewhat, if however I am not 100% accurate on who did what my apologies in advance. The tour was attended by the following members and we also capped 2 new members: Jackson, Everhard, Dribbler Paget, P.Smith, Lanyon,F..K..g McCormack, Smee, Leahy x 2, M.Grennell,M.Griffiths, Wolfie, P.Dickens, M.Parker, G.Higginson, P.Higginson, P.Brimson, B.Smith, R.Wood, B.Wilkie, A.Turton(new cap), D.Oldfeild and Daves mate Mike Hannay-(new cap).

The advance reconnaissance team consisting of Jackson, Parker, Dribbler Paget, Wilkie and Dickens arrived on the Thursday morning. After some initial hesitation in finding the luxurious Hotel Kabul we arrived at the reception to be met by the frosty Olga, who took one look at the hats and decided she wanted nothing to do with these guys. Naturally it did not take long before we had Sally in the palm of our hand, and after I had handed over a 100 Dfl key deposit we were handed our keys. We were immediately faced with a moderate climb followed by a staircase that could only be described as an "extreme 10". Once we had removed the crampons and negotiated the corridor,(even I had to crouch), Brian Wiklie whom I was sharing with entered our room, and indeed we did have a canal view, as promised in the guide book.

In fact we looked out over a major canal off towards Dam square and central station, a perfect location. I popped next door to Parker and dribbler Pagets room to find them gazing out of there window to the opposite rooms window, 2 meters away... We donned our strolling gear and went out to stroll, the Hotel Kabul is located on Warmstraat, which is one of the main roads bordering the red light district, the hotel was flanked by a police stn and a coffee shop and opposite was a bar and another coffee shop..perfect. I would at this stage like to thank my brother in law and father who scouted out the area and came up with the Hotel Kabul.

Now the Ams red light district is a pretty liberal kind of place but even there our pink hats and shirts were attracting a lot of comments, and it was clear to me that our youngest and newest Barrelhouse member, the very macho S. African, Peter Van der Dickens was having second thoughts about wearing his hat with pride. A reminder about the financial consequences seemed to pull him together and from then on the only other problem we had with him was prying him off the porno shop windows. We had breakfast, and led by Wiklie, who I mistakenly delegated as bike procurer, wen`t in search of bicycles. After walking passed the bike shop twice Brian triumphantly led us down into it.. Once we had deposited our passports, driving licences, labour cards and 2 credit cards we were finally allowed to mount our Dutch equivalents of those famous "Flying Pigeons" more commonly found on the sub continent. The locking system on these bikes was impressive and just to make things even more technically interesting the braking system was pedal operated.

We stuttered off down Dam Street wobbling all over the place and not looking at all cool. Led once again by our ace navigator Wiklie we headed East in search of the Vondel park located just north of the red light district.... After a meandering and confusing, but very interesting 1 hr cycle route we finally reached the park for our training run. We set off at a blistering pace led by dribbler, it was a real pleasure to run through trees with the smell of newly cut grass and perfect temperatures, what also helped was running past other scantily clad runners, cyclists, roller bladers, walkers and topless bathers.

In fact whilst Parker and I were distracted by the topless beauties on offer, dribbler took the opportunity to keep increasing the pace, Wiklie and Dickens were soon lost,(again), not surprising really, and after 3 frantic laps the inevitable happened, Parker ran into a tree. He claimed it moved but neither dribbler or myself saw it even twitch, we both however saw the absolute topless cracker over on the left... We gave up on the running, found Wiklie and Dickens, bathed Parkers nose which as a result of his tree attack had grown to gigantic proportions.

I decided to take the direct route back and after a 10 minute ride we reached the Hotel Kabul. I had a meeting to attend after which we all gathered to hit the red light district which was starting to gear up for the evening entertainment. Not wanting to drink on an empty tummy we all had a pleasant mushroom starter snack to line the stomach, followed by a crisp cold Heineken to wash it down with. We wandered the canals and ended up at the "old Sailor" a pub located at a strategic central location in the Red light district. This in fact became the Barrelhouse base camp for the next few days, when in doubt head for the "Old sailor". Once we had settled in and established to the regular clientele that we were not gay, the beers flowed merrily, at one stage I looked around and every one of the reconnaissance team was individually engrossed in intelligence gathering missions with different groups of the indigenous population.

Dribbler was dribbling away with a couple of other 90 year old`s, something about the war. Parker was comparing noses with a similarly endowed cloggie, Dickens was outside discussing the merits of different vibrators with a fellow awestruck S.African, and Wiklie was checking out the local special offers with a Caribbean gentleman. We left the old sailor and continued the our reconnaissance, at this stage Wiklie got tired and emotional,and my memories get hazy, I do remember reclaiming Wiklie back into the recon team, he had taken a time out, meeting Franco, your friendly live sex show tout, watching dickens sample the local fruit and Parker licking cream off his mustache!! The rest of the night is a blur......

Up the next day at the crack of dawn, the hotel provided breakfast as part of the package, as they did`nt do a "full english" we pushed off to the Globe who did an excellent value for money "english" with unlimited tea or coffee, just what we needed. Once we had finished breakfast Wiklie appeared having completed his getting up ritual, I have been on a few tours, and shared rooms with a few strange characters, but Wiklies "getting up ritual" is incredible and SLOW, and can NEVER be rushed.

The rest of the tour party were beginning to arrive from Ireland, England, Wales, Germany, and France. Unfortunately Vaughen Dennis had to cry off at the last minute as he was needed at work to make another million for a client, we also lost Everhard who was fixing a roof. Everhard came in for a tremendous amount of flak as he simply didn't turn up at the airport and Smee made numerous attempts to contact him as to his whereabouts, poor show, and without fail we all unanimously agreed that he was a rotter etc.

I think Mark Griffiths was the last to arrive from France by train sometime around 18:00 hrs, this meant that we were all on tour. By now everybody was hated up and tour shirts had been issued. Wolfie had been issued with the tour kitty, ironic really the only person trustworthy enough to hold the kitty is German!!! Those Barrelhouse members who have toured or been to the Dxb 7's will know that we have amongst Barrelhouse the famous and elusive Smee. I never worry about Smee in dxb as even the police know him and we will always get him returned, but I was a little apprehensive about letting him loose in Ams, so I had prepared a special SMEEKEEPER hat. The designated Smeekeeper was given the task of never being more than 10 meter away from Smee, in the event that he was spotted more than 10 meters away he was required to finish whatever he was drinking in one go and immediately go to Smee's side. The first ever recipient of the Smeekeeper hat was Mike Hanay, Dave Oldfields mate who came along for the ride and subsequently joined Barrelhouse. I must say that he did a magnificent job of smeekeeping, admittedly Smee made it easy for him during the early part of the evening but once smee began to realy fire on all cylinders Hannay kept up, an excellent performance.

We were invited to attend a welcoming ceremony hosted by the AMS rugby club to drink free beer and meet the opposition, we made our way there in dribs and drabs and proceeded to meet the opposition, register the team and pick up our goody bay etc. There were some old faces from the gulf, notably Bahrain and Mack, ex Sharjah, who was playing for some Irish team!! Barrelhouse made their presence felt and a good time was had by all. The team wandered back to the red light district and I think at this stage Everhard appeared. Yes, the rotter we had all castigated earlier, apparently, feeling incredibly guilty about letting us all down, he caught a flight to Rotterdam, took a train and tracked us down in the RL district, naturally we were all impressed with such commitment and took back everything we had been calling him, an excellent effort Everhard!! One of the difficulties of taking a tour to a place like MAS is the huge variety and quantity of distractions on offer, it is impossible to keep 23 adults together in such a place, even a decision like what food does everybody want is a major debating point, inevitably as the night proceeds tourists slip off to do their own thing.

I am not sure what time I got home, but I do remember the next 4 hours absolutely crystal clear, we had an extra body in our room, Bob Smith, who I can testify has the most flubbery snore I have ever heard, after 4 hrs of listening to him the sun rose, thank God, and I got up. Saturday - Rugby day, a lot of people did not actually believe we were going to play rugby.

Our first match was at 10:00, so when I went banging on doors at 09:30 there were a lot of surprised, bleary-eyed faces, rugby?? You mean we are playing. Eventually minus 3, Wilkie inevitably, Oilfeild and Hannay, we caught the bus to the ground. Fortunately we were in time for our first match, on the main pitch against Utrecht RFC, a local side. After an incredibly tight match, we lost, just, by 20 - 5, we did score a try however. The rest of the matches were also very tight, also in our pool were the Kings of Rome, Alkmaar RFC, and Loughborough University. Our final results were 4 tries for, 25 against, points for 22, points against 159. Sadly we came last in our group, which meant that we were out of the tournament, a brilliant piece of tactical play by our captain, Mark Griffiths. Barrelhouse retired to the Bar to try to dent the kitty. At this stage Hannay decided to show his musical skills, (move over Fozzie), and proceeded to dazzle the crowd with his rendition of wonderwall, with the backing of the band, (who incidentally were the Chairman of tournaments organizing committee next door neighbors). At this stage Hannay passed on Smeekeeping responsibilities to Andy Cheesy Turton, and I must say that once again the new caps showed some of the older hands how to tour.

We left the ground well lubricated and went back to the hotel Kabul, dumped our bags and proceeded out into the rl district, again !! This night is even more of a mist that the previous night, I know Doc Smith, Everhard and others went for a splendid fish meal somewhere, 10 of us turned up at by brother in laws bar for a special show, but it was shut. Foolishly I had allowed Wilkie to coordinate the arrangements for this evenings entertainment, (you would have thought I might of learnt by now_, something was obviously lost in the translation, so we taxied back to the rid to a little bar Wilkie know and proceeded to get totally lost in the haze. I never saw Everhard again, hope you got back o.k. Peter??

The next day about 12 of us made our way back to the ground to support the other UAE side, the hurricanes that didn't have the benefit of such a brilliantly tactical captain as Griffiths and had foolishly got through to the plate. They got hammered on the pitch and then joined us to get hammered off the Pitch! Once again things became hazy, it was interesting that the haziness was beginning to strike earlier and earlier in the day!! I left the ground to go back with a couple of the lads who were catching an early flight to Blighty, it also meant that I could say cheerio to some of the other tourists who had not come to the ground and were also leaving that night, (it is now SUN if you're confused). Unfortunately I never saw any of then again, we, (Lanyon and I), simply never bumped into anybody, I have been reliably informed that everybody go back in one piece though, including Everhard… presumably ???
I spent the rest of the evening with Lanyon and 2 young American girls both called Sally who were also staying in the Hotel Kabul, and Frank and Olive from Manchester, none of whom had been to live sex show, so being the gentlemen that we are, Lanyon and I took them all to meet Franco and the Casa Mia, franks wishes came true and he ended up on stage eating a banana. Olive was thinking to have a belly button piercing, (she was about 50 years old and a very nice person in the true sense of the word), however once Frank had eaten his fill they made their apologies and left. I spent the rest of the night at the White Hart pub chatting to other rugby players and keeping an eye on our adopted Barrelhouse Sallies, once I had made sure that the Sallies were in safe hands I retired to bed to watch the sun come up out of my window… Another excellent night in AMS.

The next day saw the last of the tourists leave… one by one they crawled off… most of them still half cut… still grinning stupidly… and all without fail swearing they'll be back next year………..