A Dutchman's view on Hungarian korfball. An insightful post by Bram Horsthuis.

When Bandor asked me to write something about korfball in Hungary, I loved to get started. Now, 2 months later, I really need to get something on paper...

First, let me introduce myself. Like many tourists I fell in love with the most beautiful resource in Hungary... Problem was, Hungary was far away. So.. I decided to move. Actually it was alltime korfball popstar Dzsida Tamás who got me into this mess. A long time ago he moved to Groningen in The Netherlands and fed us pálinka (the strong fruit schnaps of Hungary) and paprikás krumpli (a typical Hungarian dish with potato, sausage and spiced with paprika powder). We were instantly in love and couldn't refuse when he asked us to join him at the summer tournament in Hungary. The rest you might guess.

So where was I? O yes, I moved to Hungary and started playing korfball there. I decided to play at the same club my girlfriend Dodo played at, Kenguruk. It was a dangerous choice making Tamás my enemy (he played at Szentendre) but it seems I was feeling lucky that autumn.

People
Kenguruk is a great club with many enthusiastic people playing the great game of Korfball. The first thing I noticed about korfball and the people: everybody is so damn enthusiastic! It looks like everybody wants to organize something or do something with korfball. I know it doesnt feel like that for all of you - I have noticed Hungarians can be quite negative about their own performances - but in my eyes it is true. I was truely impressed about all these young people taking so much responsibility and showing organizational skills.

I have never organized a summer or youth tournament, be in presidencies, be a team manager, book a sporthall, etc. The fact that korfball is not really subsidized, is a small sport and that it is not easy to find an suitable sporthall in Hungary, means everybody needs to be creative. I think this is a great thing born from necessity.

The Game
After my first match of korfball in Hungary I needed an oxygen mask. True, I was becoming fat because of zsiros kenyér (bread with tasty fat on it) and turo rudi (a typical Hungarian candy), but why was everybody running so fast? In Holland we praise ourselves scoring goals doing as little effort as we can. Here it seemed the other way around: run as fast as you can. If you score a goal, that's nice, but please: keep on running and jumping like crazy!

At Kenguruk we worked hard to start building a tactical sense into the club and team. Ugly thing about team sports: if one person doesn't do what he or she should, your opponent scores. Defend the assist? Everybody should defend the assist. Same goes for the rebound. After you really tackle this, you can make exceptions but first the basics should be right.

But how do you learn these basics, if you start korfball after your twenties??

Club culture
One thing I need to get off my chest: I was really bothered that a lot of people do not feel bound by a club. People just play wherever they feel like at that moment. They go to have fun there, and if they don't like it anymore they just return and are welcomed with open arms!

As a trainer, you put lots of efforts into a youthful player. In Hungary, chances are very large that that player walks out the door the next coming year. And everybody accepts that like it is normal! Young players were always 'forbidden' to upplay in the first team. How could they learn to play better, if they could not play with better players? By playing at ANOTHER club, because then, it was allowed!

That's why I am so happy rules are evolving in Hungary. It is now possible for players from the second team to play in the first. In this way you get a more natural selection, younger or weaker players can experience more and will become better.

Getting the most out of people when you do not really have the means to reward or 'punish' is very difficult. It is easy talking if you play for a club with 8 senior teams: if you are not good enough you go one team down. If you show you are good and have talent, you go one team up.

In Hungary this is almost impossible for most teams, if a player is 'punished' by going down, he either leaves the club or quits. Soon you can't fill 2 teams and you are forced to play with one team and loose lot's of players..

There is only one real solution: get more people to play korfball in Hungary and make clubs bigger, at least 3 teams per club. Last házi buli (party at somebody's home) at Kenguruk I saw a lot of young new players. I also heard that currently a 'baby korfball' team is being created by some players. Who knows what the future will bring?

It was fun writing for this forum, maybe we will talk about korfball over a beer in one of the 1000 kocsma's (pubs) in Budapest?

That happens when you melt cheese and add paprika...

Cheers, Brami.

PS: the editor only added some formatting, and the explanations of the Hungarian words, for our non-Hungarian readers. Otherwise there were no changes made whatsoever in Bram's original text.