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The hattrick social (Wales edition)

Written by robbgenghis

What happens when hattrick managers leave the safety of their electronic world and meet up in pubs and talk face-to-face? Your intrepid Ed journeyed to Cardiff city centre to find out and drink far too much. Here are his (hazy) recollections of the day. This article was probably sponsored by Guinness.

Well, the journey for me started around 11am on the Saturday as fellow HPE, Bink, picked me up and we set off for Wales. We’d both been to many such events in London but now it was time to spread the hattrick social further afield. Since I became editor it was always my intention to organise a social in Wales so Cardiff seemed a good place to start. I’d managed to persuade both Bink & England manager PHGHGH1 (how many g and h are there in this username?) to journey to Wales and hoped to meet a few of the more local HT managers there.

We eventually arrived and checked into respective guest houses to drop off luggage. I arrived at the pub first (to make sure I could meet up with the early crowd and just because, well, I wanted to).
In order to actually recognise each other the trusted ‘I’ll be wearing this t-shirt’ was exchanged on the forums.

Then, we hit the first problem - the pub had no less than three doors to get in. I’d been sat between 2 of them while Zigmonde & Daddycool had grabbed a spot by the other. They both then decided to check around the pub and found me nursing my 1st pint of the day.

So, we were off. Discussions inevitably lead to the various hattrick teams and discussions of tactics (you can learn a few neat tricks from these meets). Not surprisingly the real life football teams get mentioned and there were probably a number of other conversations (did someone mention politics? Surely not).

Once Bink had finally checked in (thanks Premier Inn, he wasn’t in a hurry really) he joined followed swiftly by PHGHGGHGHG1 who had braved the traffic and various non-existent taxi’s.
The magnificent (?) seven were completed by Rowenna & Salmon guy (also braving traffic en route from Kent).

So we ended up with 4 of us travelling from England with 3 Welsh residents. Nationality-wise not so good for Wales as we numbered 4 English, 1 Israeli, 1 Russian & 1 Welshman. I’m really hoping for more Welsh managers at the next one.

After several hours of drinking (and a few games of pool) it was time to soak up all that alcohol with a meal so we left the pub at errr.. lets say about 7pm. Your intrepid Ed had noticed there was a nice place to get a curry just along the road from the pub but it turned out to be closed (worth noting that Zigmonde & Rowenna had chosen to leave by this point. Worth mentioning as I’m usually the one to go home first)

We then sensibly followed a hen party back into the city centre. Daddycool then took the lead and talked about Giovanni’s. He wasn’t raving about his Italian head spec striker as it turned out to be a restaurant. Having got there Bink had found a curry house on the way and insisted it was far more traditional for us to go for a curry (or something, probably some reason, we went for the curry anyway).

We then staggered forth from the curry house and Daddycool took us on a nice tour of the city centre as we looked for a shop to stock up on ciggies then a pub we could all agree on. Sadly, we could not agree on a pub so Salmon Guy & Daddycool picked a nice packed noisy pub while the three old men (yes, that means me too) headed off to a nice quiet pub for a last pint of the evening.

All in all a nice 10 hours or so of drinking, eating, playing pool and talking about hattrick and life in general. So, see you all at the next one?