EFAF Cup

This week we find ourselves in the EFAF Cup Group Stage against the Bern Grizzlies(Switzerland) with a good chance to reestablish ourselves as a European power. I will write more about Bern tomorrow, but will inform you now on the EFAF Cup and its history:

--from Eurobowl.com--
The EFAF-Cup is an annual invitational competiton played since 2002, following EURO-Cup and Federation-Cup, both european tournaments played in the '90s. EFAF-Cup is a competition - comparable to soccer´s UEFA Cup - for european top teams of their highest national league. The EFAF-Cup Tournament is played in regional groups. The group winner meet in the EFAF-Cup Final to play out the overall winner, the EFAF-Cup Champion.

First Championship was won by Graz Giants. The austrian team did show a great game in Graz in front of more than 1.200 spectators against the long years spanish top team Badalona Drags, covered by Austrian TV.

A new visitor record in 2003: 4000 people followed the EFAF-Cup Final 2003 between Papa Joe`s Tyrolean Raiders (Austria) und Carlstad Crusaders (Sweden). The Scandinaviens did win the thunderstorm game and became EFAF-Cup Champion 2003. In 2004 Raiders team from Innsbruck could win the trophy in front of 4.500 visitors - again a new record attendance - against the British Champion PA Knights, coming from London area.

2005 two new clubs showed up in the EFAF-Cup final. Elancourt Templiers, French Semi-Finalist of the previous year, lost the final against Marburg Mercenaries, the Semi-Finalist 2005 of the German League GFL. 2500 visitors, a club record, watched the game played in the city of Elancourt, close to Paris.

After 11 clubs in 2005 competition the 2006 tournament showed 15 participating teams. TUREK Graz Giants could win their second EFAF-Cup title in 2006. In the final Graz would beat the Norwegian champion Eidsvoll 1814 by 37:20 in ASKÖ-stadium Eggenberg in front of 2.600 visitors.

2007 again was the year for the TUREK Graz Giants with their third EFAF-Cup victory. The european champion did win the final against the austriaan club Cineplexx Blue Devils Hohenems from Vorarlberg, Austria by 28 : 26 after a halftime score of 0 : 20.

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After blowing a 20 point lead in the championship game last year, you can imagine how important this tournament is to our organization this year. It will be important that, though injuries abound, we come out and make a statement to the rest of the tournament. Sadly, this tournament lends itself toward running up the score as the group bracket for us only includes two teams, and will be a home & away 8 quarter game. Hopefully, the score will get ugly this week and we'll be able to play our youngsters during the next meeting. That being said, the Swiss teams always bring their best against the Blue Devils because we lie on their eastern boarder and many of the top Swiss players play for our team to test their skills in the top league in Europe, Austria. Should be a fun one & great atmosphere.