AHF - Events

North Kirra, Queensland, played host to the Australian Beach handball Championships over 28-30 January.

There was an excellent turn out for the tournament with 8 Men’s teams and 9 Women’s teams from all over Australia vying for the rights to be the Australian Champions for 2011.

	Men			Women
1	UQ1	(QLD)	1	UQ	(QLD)
2	Monash Grey	(VIC)	2	Monash Spring	(VIC)
3	Enter sandman	(WA)	3	South Coast	(NSW)
4	Mix	(QLD/NSW)	4	UTS II	(NSW)
5	UQ 2	(QLD)	5	Flying Captials	(ACT)
6	Griffith	(QLD)	6	Secret Weapon	(QLD)
7	Monash Blue	(NSW)	7	Monash Summer	(VIC)
8	Canberra	(ACT)	8	UTS I	(NSW)
			9	4 West	(WA)

Prior to the tournament commencing, an IHF Master Class in Beach Handball was conducted by George Bebetsos (Greece) and Sinisa Ostoic (Croatia). 24 people attended the course with 22 gaining passing grade as Level 1 referees.

Mark Dawson
Ben Dawson
Jason Smith
Rikke Petersen
Montaser Hellis
Stephane Tarbardin
David Thompson
Christian Bitz
Andrew Mills
Melissa Condon
Jessica Fearnside
Alice Keighley
Rachel Lodewijks
Claire Dennerley
Bronwyn Thompson
Shane Darlington
Janne Lilleeng
Denise Westhaeusler
Mariel Soulard
Bodil Carstens
Tatjana Pismanovska
James Darlington

All participants in the course were highly involved during the tournament and the level of refereeing and official work improved exponentially during the tournament.

All teams were extremely even with approximately half the games going to shootouts.

In the end the Men’s finalist were both from Victoria with Monash Grey playing tournament favourites Monash Blue with the Women’s finalise both from NSW with South Coast playing UTS 2. UTS 2 made the final by virtue of beating 4 West in their pool match.

	Games	For	Against	Difference	Rank
Women
4 West	8	13	5	8	2
Flying Captials	8	10	4	6	4
Monash Spring	8	4	14	-10	8
Monash Summer	8	12	7	5	5
Secret Weapon	8	5	12	-7	7
UQ	8	11	7	4	6
South Coast	8	14	5	9	1
UTS I	8	1	16	-15	9
UTS II	8	14	6	8	2

Men
Canberra	7	7	10	-3	6
Enter sandman	7	8	8	0	4
Griffith	7	10	5	5	3
Mix	7	0	12	-12	8
Monash Blue	7	14	3	11	1
Monash Grey	7	12	4	8	2
UQ1	7	7	9	-2	5
UQ 2	7	6	11	-5	7

Both the tournament dinner on Friday at Kirra Sports Club and the informal gathering on Saturday at the Kirra Beach Hotel were well attended and enjoyed by all, with a rowdy rendition of a Divinyls song by two Queensland Men’s players being a highlight.

The Men’s final typified the intensity of the weekend with the game going to a shoot out to determine the winner, Monash Blue took out the first set 16:5 and Monash Grey responding in the second set 13:9.

The shootout lasted 6 shots each before Monash Grey emerged victorious 4:3 after a miss on the first golden goal shot by Monash Blue.

The Women’s final was a replay of the final pool game for each team. In the pool round UTS 2 was victorious 2:1 over South Coast. However in the final South Coast got their revenge for the loss taking out the match 2:0 with wins of 8:3 and 11:5 in the two sets respectively. Emma van Bussel being the standout with 10 goals in the game for South Coast.

Both George and Sinisa were extremely impressed with the level of handball played and believe Australia has an excellent opportunity to progress in Beach Handball. Both were expecting high competition from the Australian Men’s team but were extremely impressed with the general level of play in the Women’s competition.

The tournament received some media coverage with Foxsports attending to film a general information piece which was shown on the Foxsports news loop on Friday 4/2/11. Footage of the report is available via the Foxsports website of the Australian Handball Federation.