Glad to see pride comes first in Ordizia
Everybody, in whatever sport, should adopt a second team to support – ideally from a distance – in that detached manner that offers up all of the enjoyment and little of the angst of direct involvement.
For me, this season, that club has been Ordizia or Ampo Ordizia (to give their generous sponsor a welldeserved shout out). Ordizia is a small seemingly rather unremarkable town some 20 miles southwest of San Sebastien and just up the road from Guernica where Nazi German bombers did their worst in the Spanish civil war. It’s very Basque indeed.
In retrospect, I first clocked the place many years ago on a late summer evening when I drove in hot and bothered looking for food and drink after a day following the Vuelta Espana bike race.
What caught my attention though was 40 or so rugby players, some hardly in the first flush of youth, training hard at the town’s small sports stadium. For some reason I wasn’t expecting it but they were having a great time and, actually, why not, as fellow Basques just 30 miles away over the border in Biarritz and Bayonne were amongst the best players in France. Why wouldn’t Spanish Basques enjoy a little rugby along with pelota and Bull fighting?
Later that evening at a cheery cider bar/restaurant – they love their cider down that way – in the more attractive older part of town, I also spotted various rugby posters and photographs of the town’s team. Although my Basque is non existent, a blatant rip-off of the old Lord Kitchener “Your Country Needs You” poster on the wall suggested they were appealing for new players.
I vowed to return one day to discover more about this curious rugby outpost but of course never did. When you cover the Tour de France or the Vuelta or the Giro you encounter scores of places
every year that you will ‘definitely’ return to one day. And never do.
Fast forward some 15 years to last December and I was following up the story of Spain’s new international Kawa Leauma, a Kiwi who had settled in Spain, who had died accidentally when falling from a balcony in Amsterdam just hours after Spain’s Rugby Europe game with the Netherlands. He was listed as playing for Ordizia. That name again. A blast from the past.
Out of curiosity, I looked up their brilliant club website, with its quirky almost poetic English translation and discovered a wonderful vibrant little rugby club that was clearly the social centre of the entire town with teams of all ages and all sorts of social events – a cooking club just
for men being one of them – organised as well as rugby sides for all age groups.
They were grieving the loss of Leauma or ‘Kawa’ as they simply called him, who was evidently a hugely popular man, a cheerful rugby itinerant who loved the place and decided to stay and seek Spanish nationality. It wasn’t the small amount Ordizia can pay their occasional overseas player, just the ambience and craik.
I quickly discovered why an adventurous outdoor loving Kiwi would fall for the place. Boasting the most famous Wednesday market in the province of Gupuzka, it is famed for its cheese and milk products and the inhabitants seem to spend most of their leisure time either eating or playing an odd array of sports
aside from rugby and the ubiquitous pelota.
There is an extraordinary array of strong man events for the team’s young buckos to get involved with. There is Aizkora proba (wood chopping), Harri jasotzea (stone lifting), Harri zulaketa (hole digging), Ingude altxatzea (anvil lifting). Lasto altxatzea (bale lifting), Lasto botatzea (bale tossing), Ontzi eramatea (churn carrying) Trontza (sawing) and Txinga eramatea (weight carrying). There are evidently a myriad of way for the young rugby player to flex his muscles and work up an appetite to do the local cuisine justice.
Anyway, after the sadness of Kawa’s death the club, minnows even by the modest standards of Spanish club rugby, dedicated the rest of the season to his memory and set their sights on winning their first ever Honore 1 title, Spain’s premier domestic league. The closest they had come being runners-up in 2011 and 2012 – the historical highpoint of the club thus far.
So, with mounting excitement in recent months, I have logged on every Monday morning to get my blast of Basque culture and gossip and to check their steady fight up the table until they eventually secured a play-off place with fourth place in the regular season. The dream was still on.
First came the quarter-final and a nervous 26-20 win over Seville Science which heralded a clash with the much-feared El Salvador at their place – the fearsome Pepe Rojo – in Valladolid, in central Spain. El Salvador, seven times winners of the competition, had done the double over Ordizia in the regular season and were expected to win at a canter.
The rugby gods were shining down though and Ordizia recorded a famous 30-27 win which had the club booking a squadron of busses to take fans down to the final against UE Santboiana on Sunday.
Santboiana, based at Sant Boi de Llobregat, near Barcelona, have the reputation of breeding huge forwards, indeed the town’s most noted citizens are NBA legends Marc and Paul Gasol, who are both nudging seven foot tall. Alas for Spanish rugby, neither could be persuaded to switch games. Marc with his reputation of being the NBA’s hard man and most physical player would have been a major unit.
It was a 4.30am departure from Ordizia for a 12pm final. Hopes were high but alas, they went down 23-17. Judging from the number of official receptions, parades and excited gatherings in the town’s food laden bars in the days that followed they dont seem to be taking defeat too badly.
That’s my kind of club, I’m going to stick with them for a while yet. In fact, I rather fancy there is a book to be written here one day!