How Tom Cruise Almost Saved Icelandic Handball

Handball is to Iceland what football is to Brazillians. When Iceland plays an international handball tournament, the gross national product suffers. During the recent handball World Championship in Germany, I would dare to estimate that on average, close to a half of all workhours in the country were spent talking about handball, discussing our chances, dissecting strategy, debating substitution patterns and badmouthing referees. There are in fact, 300,000 coaches for the Icelandic men’s handball team. Obviously, it is a cliché to talk about sports in terms of religion. None the less, team Iceland, aptly nicknamed “Our Boys”, is the single most powerful unifier in our country. As a nation, we tend to disagree on everything, except international handball. No religious organisation could realistically demand such devout following from its supporters. Besides Scientology perhaps… But their star player is Tom (nicknamed “the Messiah”) Cruise, while ours is Guðjón Valur (not deemed worthy of a nickname). It is not really a level playing field. After an easy victory against the Australians in the opening game, “Our Boys” dug themselves a deep hole against the Ukrainian team in the second game of the preliminary round. Half-the-way-to-China-deep. A game that had been considered all but a formality for Iceland turned into something else entirely, as the Ukrainians outplayed them in the second half while Iceland’s offensive game came to a halt. It was one of the worst performance by the team in recent memory, and frankly, an embarrasing day to be an Icelander. A second loss against France in the final game of the preliminary round would mean the Icelandic team would have been playing for seats 13 through 23 in the tournament, while a victory would likely propel them to the top of their four team group, ahead of both France and Ukraine; and the sitting duck that was Australia. Things were looking bleak. France is an an elite team in handball, the current European Champions and winner of the having previously coasted through games against both Ukraine and Australia; the team’s coach, former star player Alfreð Gíslason, managed to pull a rabbitt out of his hat. In a motivational ploy befit of Pat Riley, Gíslason spendt the night before the game splicing together game films of the French team, apparently interjected with scenes from the Last Samurai. (There is no escaping the Tom Cruise connection, is there?). It worked. The Icelanders were swift and deadly in the opening minutes, attacking the French defense in a samuraian fashion, scoring five unanswered goals and building a healthy ten goal lead by halftime. A familiar ghost hunted the Icelandic team the first few minutes of the second half. They tend to start slow and play sluggishly after returning from the dressing room, dropping out of close games or allowing opposing teams to close the gap on more than one occasion, their downfall in many previous games. After four unanswered goals by the Frenchmen, things were starting to look bleak. Fortunently, Tom Cruise’s teaching’s had allowed the team to build a comfortable lead, giving the team time to find their rhythm again and eventually hold back the Frenchmen for an eight goal victory. Tunis was the first opponent in the second round. They were pretty much done with in an easy fashion, sparking hope among Icelandic followers that perhaps the team would go far in the tournament. The next game however, a nailbiter against Polland quickly brought supporters back to earth. The Polish team proved stronger in the final minutes while Iceland committed numerous turnovers, losing the game more by their own mistaken hands, rather than the strength of the Poles. Polland would then go on to claim the second place in the tournament, much to the joy of the large Polish community in Iceland. Again, the Icelandic team was in a do or die position. In order to advance in the tournament, they would have to win one out of the next two games. They secured a place in the eight team playoffs by beating Slovenia in their next game. With a seat in the playoffs secured, the final game in the second round against Germany was, expendable… for lack of a better word. Coach Gíslason decided to make changes to the team and rest key players, making sure Our Boys never presented a challenge to the Germans who cruised to an easy victory. This decision has drawn a lot of heat from various Icelandic handball experts (and there are a lot of those). The Game against Slovenia turned out to be the team’s final victory in the tournament. The changes in the team in team in the game against Germany may have shifted the momentum in the team, effectively ending all hopes for further progress in the tournament. That is not to say that the rest of the tournament went down without drama. The Icelandic team drew Denmark in the first game of the eight team finals. For Icelanders, games against Denmark, the old colonial masters, are twice as important. Defeat aginst the Danish team hurts twice as much and beating them is double the joy of beating anyone else. In the recent years, the two teams had met on the handball court a total of five times, with four of thoses games enging in a tie, while Iceland managed to claim a victory by a single goal in one game. Obviously, the two teams were almost dead even in terms of handball proficiency. The game against Denmark proved to be the most exciting sporting event of the year, perhaps even the decade, with an outside chance of even being the most exciting match of the century. It was surely more exciting than the Mission Impossible trilogy, or any other Tom Cruise movie for that matter, with the exception of Top Gun perhaps. After trading goals evenly throughout the match, Denmark managed to pull ahead by four goals late in the second half. The Icelandic tear rallied back and managed to pull within one in the last minute of regulation. Down by a goal, Iceland managed to win back the ball in the waining seconds and start an offence. The time ran out before the Icelander’s managed to score, but they were awarded a penalty shot after time had expired. Standing on the penalty line, playmaker Snorri Steinn Guðjónsson showed the world just how cool he can be under pressure, softly sneaking the ball with a spin of the floor and past the goalkeeper, sending the game into overtime. The extra period was equally exciting. The decisive moment in the game came a few seconds before halftime, with Iceland up one goal, they won the ball and headed for fastbreak. Logi Geirson, one of the players who had kept Iceland in the game during crucial moments inexplicably turned the ball over when he threw a pass that went nowhere near an Icelandic teammate, instead finding a Danish opponent. Instead of Iceland being up two goals in halftime, the Danes managed to tie the game. The second extra period was tied until the final seconds. With 15 seconds left and the game tied, Alexander Petterson of the Icelandic team found an opening, but his shot hit the goalpost, Denmark gathered the rebound and scored a fast-break goal in the last second of the game. Such is the life of the Samurai. You win some, you loose some. An inch to the left and Petterson’s final shot would have secured an Icelandic victory. The loss seemed to deflate the Icelandic team completely. In the following games against Russia and Spain the team uninspiringly mailed it in, finishing the tournament in eighth place. Now, for the harakiri ritual…