In May 2024, four intrepid adventurers travelled from the UK to Bischheim, near Strasbourg in France to compete in the 2024 Sjoelen World Cup.
Being able to double the size of the UK contingent in the eight months since the previous world cup was a great achievement in itself, but when Sander Logtenberg, the Philippines’ only representative in the competition asked if he could fill the fifth spot in the UK team for the team competition, it meant we were able to field the first ever UK team in a Sjoelen World Cup team competition.
The team comprised existing players Bethany Burrow and James Atherton, along with new joiners Tom Burrow and Constance McIntosh Smith.
The UK players outside the Parc des Sports de Bischheim
The results of the UK players were “as expected”. All four qualified for the first round of the individual knock-out competition, where they were summarily dismissed due to the tournament structure pitting them against the top players.
In the men’s competition, James was eliminated by the top men’s qualifier, Henk van der Ree Doolaard (NED) and Tom had the great fortune of being knocked out by then reigning champion, Siem Oostenbrink (NED). In the women’s competition, Bethany played against Ida Maytum (NED), the runner up from the 2023 edition, and Constance was eliminated by Elly Mensen, the then reigning champion.
It sounds all doom and gloom, but one of the great things about the World Cup is to play against players who are much better from you and learn from them.
Ida Maytum and Bethany Burrow after their first round knockout match (which Ida won!)
In the team competition, the UK played against a strong French team in the qualification round… and against an equally strong (but different) French team in the ranking round.
The UK and French teams after the ranking match
Constance and James were thrilled to be selected to adjudicate the team final (Netherlands v Germany) and 3rd-4th place play-off (Suriname v France). It felt like an acceptance into the international sjoelen community that we are grateful for.
Almost as important as the play was the opportunity to talk to our fellow players from all over the world – friends made at the last World Cup and new friends from this one. We also witnessed the first Para Sjoelen International Competition, co-hosted by France and South Korea. We’re really excited about this development in the sport and hope to do more in this area in the UK in the near future.
Constance getting ready to judge the team 3rd-4th place play-off
Many congratulations to Johanna, Gilles and their team of 60 volunteers for such a fun and successful World Cup. We don’t yet know where the next edition will be – scheduled for 2026 – but we can’t wait!
This is a cake in the shape of a (full size) sjoelbak
The United Kingdom will be sending four players to May’s Sjoelen World Cup in Bischheim, France – doubling the number who competed in the previous edition.
Sjoelen UK’s original players, Bethany Burrow and James Atherton will be back for their second World Cup and they will be joined by new teammates Tom Burrow and Constance McIntosh Smith.
Tom is a veteran of the sport, having made his own board based on guesstimated measurements and memory after learning to play in Spain in the 1980s. With no domestic competitions to compete in over the last few decades, this will be Tom’s first competition and he is looking forward to meeting Sjoelen players from all over the world.
A relative newcomer to Sjoelen, Constance will also be competing in her first tournament. She had never encountered the sport until she started playing at Sjoelen UK’s sponsors, Beerblefish Brewing Co., but quickly picked up decent technique and some great scores.
The Sjoelen UK team will be competing at the Parc des Sports de Bischheim, near Strasbourg in France on 9-11 May 2024 against teams from across the globe, including Sweden, the USA, Suriname, the Netherlands, Portugal and this year’s hosts, France. They will be participating individually in the men’s and women’s competitions and (with an as yet unknown fifth player) in the team competition.
Tom BurrowBethany BurrowJames AthertonConstance McIntosh Smith
The second and final day of the Sjoelen World Cup saw the knock-out stages of the individual tournaments unfold, along with the finals of the team competition.
James and Bethany were up against the fourth-ranked male and fifth-ranked female competitors, respectively, both of who are Dutch. Somewhat predictably, both were thrashed in the first knock-out round, but this gave them the opportunity to learn even more from some excellent players – a real privilege. The men’s singles title went to Siem Oostenbrink and the women’s singles competition was won by Elly Mensen, both from the Netherlands.
The team competition was won by the Netherlands, with Sweden taking the silver and Germany the bronze.
The competitive highlight of the UK players’ World Cup came in the pairs tournament, where they beat a Dutch pair in one out of the five boards of their match!
Sjoelen UK would like to thank all of the organising committee for their work in putting together such an amazing event for all the competitors and the Algemene Nederlandse Sjoelbond for hosting the world sjoelen community. We had many interesting and fruitful discussions with players and organisers from all over the world about how to develop the game in our own countries and globally.
We can’t wait for the next World Cup and, thankfully, we won’t have to because it’s in May 2024 in Strasbourg, France!
Today was very busy at the Sjoelen World Cup in Beneden-Leeuwen, Netherlands. We started the day with the first qualification round in the individual competition. The format for this is that each player plays 10 games of sjoelen, one on each of 10 boards – you start at a board and then move along to the end of the row and then back to the beginning until you’ve played all 10 in the row. You might start by playing or by judging and then you swap for the second half of the session.
For the UK, Bethany Burrow played first and returned a total of 1037 points. Most of her scores were around the 105 mark with a 126 on the second game, but three sub-100 scores hurt her total. In the men’s competition, James Atherton hit 914 in the first round, including a new personal high score of 108.
In the afternoon’s second round, James played first and didn’t do quite as well in the first session. Bethany also dropped a little, but still returned 1005.
These scores mean that James goes through to the men’s knockout competition in 125th place under the guaranteed place system (under which each country’s top player goes through automatically) – 128 players go through in the men’s competition.
Bethany qualified in 61st place based on her scores (64 women go through in that competition), but ended up in 60th place because of the way the guaranteed place system works.
There was barely time to breathe before the team competition started. The UK didn’t field the required five players for a team, so Bethany and James were not scheduled to play, but they were asked by the three USA representatives if they wanted to form a joint team. And so transatlantic relations got a boost when Bethany and James joined forces with Kevin, Jade and Daniel. Sadly, the team didn’t make it out of the qualifying round, but it was great to be able to participate in the team competition.
The team is looking forward to tomorrow’s individual knockout tournament, where both players will play the 20-2 system for the first time in competition.
Today was a big day – the UK’s first ever sjoelen team registered at the World Cup in Beneden-Leeuwen, Netherlands! We also played our first ever international match, against the lovely Sonja and Robert Pick from Team Suriname. We lost – but it was a hard fought match and we even drew on one of the boards.
This evening saw a meeting of the head coaches, where we discussed the next two World Cups and heard about how sjoelen is developing in all the participating countries, especially in South Korea – more on that to come later.
Tomorrow, we’ll be playing in the qualifying rounds of the individual competition, and we may play again in the open pairs tournament.
Finally, we may have some exciting news about the team competition (which we aren’t currently scheduled to be playing in), so watch this space…!
Husband and wife team Bethany Burrow and James Atherton will represent the UK at the Sjoelen World Cup in the Netherlands in August. They will compete against players from across the world at the tournament, which will take place in Beneden-Leeuwen from 31 August to 2 September. This is the first time that the UK has had representation in the World Cup – the UK is not a traditional Sjoelen-playing country.
The World Cup has been postponed twice due to the Covid pandemic. Bethany said, “The opportunity to represent my country has been worth waiting for and, to be honest, it’s given us extra time to practice, but it’s been a hard time for the organisers.”
Competition is expected to be stiff at the tournament, with strong teams from the Netherlands and Sweden competing against players from many other countries.
In UK terms, Bethany is a veteran of the sport, having learned to play as a child, while James is a relative newcomer. He learned to play after Bethany encouraged him to get a Sjoelen board for his brewery, Beerblefish Brewing Co., a couple of years ago.
On their chances in the World Cup, James said, “Let’s face it, we’re not there to win against the Dutch superstars, but this is a starting point for the UK team and will hopefully put the country on the map as one that plays Sjoelen.”
The organisers of the Sjoelen World Cup, which was due to take place in May this year, have issued a statement to say that the competition will not go ahead as planned due to ongoing concerns about COVID-19 restrictions affecting the event.
The organisers want the World Cup to go ahead without restrictions and they are now discussing the possibility of holding the tournament in September 2023, when local authorities feel it will be less likely that restrictions will apply.
This edition of the World Cup was originally due to be held in 2021 – as the event is usually every two years, this new delay will effectively mean that a cycle has been skipped.
Hi there! I’m Bethany, the founder of Sjoelen UK. At the time of writing, it’s basically just me, a sjoelen-playing island in an ocean of, well, everyone else. It seems strange, now I think about it, that a game I’ve been playing nearly all my life is only played in the UK by a very small number of people, and I want to do something about it!
When I was a little girl, I went on holiday with my parents to Spain. It was the first time I’d ever been on a plane and certainly one of the first times I’d stayed in a hotel – and it was amazing. We stayed in Tossa de Mar on the Costa Brava and went to lots of exciting places.
I particularly remember seeing the Barça pre-season showcase under Terry Venables and then crying because the musical fountains were so beautiful that I didn’t want to leave (it was very late and I was probably very tired by then!)
Anyway, one of the abiding memories of the trip was seeing people playing this strange game I’d never seen before. What looked (from a distance) like a wallpaper pasting table was set up in the shade of some trees in the hotel grounds. On closer inspection, the players were sliding discs down this table into slots at the end.
My parents were as intrigued as I was and, after a few tentative tries with no idea of the rules, a kind Dutch man put us out of our misery and taught us how to play sjoelen.
We played the game the whole holiday. My parents had palled up with another couple and they played too. I was a little bit too small to be any good at this point, but I still enjoyed the game and wanted to play along with the rest of the crew.
When we got home, my parents weren’t done – they wanted to play more, but there was one problem: where would they be able to get a board in the UK? Don’t forget that this was long before you could just look it up on the internet. Searches of library catalogues for books with more information about the game didn’t yield much either.
So, eventually, having more or less given up on finding a board for sale, my Dad made one. From memory. No actual measurements to go from, no helpful pictures. Looking back now, it was a touch on the large side, but overall he did an absolutely brilliant job and we spent many happy evenings and weekends playing sjoelen. Or shula. Shooler. No-one really knew how to spell it. We didn’t care.
Any time anyone came round to the house, we played sjoelen. My schoolfriends (or a significant proportion of them, at any rate) played sjoelen.
I left home to go to university and my playing time decreased until I eventually wasn’t playing at all.
Fast forward a couple of decades and I was at the Campaign for Real Ales’ Pig’s Ear Beer Festival in December 2021. CAMRA beer festivals often have a stand with some bar games for people to have a go at and win prizes. I just happened to notice that one of the games they had was sjoelen.
I didn’t think much about it at the time – it almost caught up with me later when I thought, “Oh goodness, that was a sjoelen board, wasn’t it?” And then it played on my mind for a bit and I thought about getting one for the taproom at our family brewery.
Initially, I asked my Dad if he had the plan for the one he made – it’s still used but he would have had to measure it to get the dimensions and plan, and now that we do have the internet, I researched how much it would be to just buy one. I found them to be more reasonably priced than I thought and decided that when the materials and the time to make one were considered, it was actually cost effective to buy one – and that also meant we could have a tournament standard sjoelbak to practise on.
When the sjoelbak arrived in the taproom, it was an instant hit – I unwrapped it while the bar was open and then couldn’t get a look in because some of the regulars wanted to play!
Taproom regular Terry giving the sjoelbak its trial run
Finally, I did manage to get disc in hand and a flood of nostalgia hit me. And I wiped the floor with everyone, even after not playing for 20 years. It turned out I was fairly good – not brilliant, but fairly good.
The sjoelbak continued to be popular and I started wondering whether there were other people playing in the UK and whether there were competitions or leagues being organised. Online research came up with a pretty emphatic no – if there are, they must be very localised and not advertised online. I did find a company offering sjoelen tournaments in the South East, but these are one-offs, not an ongoing playing of the sport.
I contacted the Algemene Nederlandse Sjoelbond (ANS, the Dutch Shuffleboard League) and asked them if they knew of any activity in the UK. They didn’t. And they also confirmed that no UK team had played in the last few World Cups (or possibly at all).
Then I found the Internet Sjoelen League, run by a chap in Vancouver, Washington (USA), and I asked him the same thing – are there UK players? He’d had a few come through the league but they’d been inactive for a while and he didn’t know of any concerted effort at organising sjoelen as a sport in the UK.
This led me to a few places. First, I joined the Internet Sjoelen League. I have to be in the rookie division for now, but on my current form, I’d be somewhere in Division E (there’s an F and a G too). Then I decided to see if I could play in the World Cup. The kind person I’d been in contact with at the ANS told me how and when to enter, and that is the current goal.
Come 26 May, I intend to be listening to my national anthem and walking out in my national sjoelen shirt as an international sjoelen player. Sounds bonkers, now I think about it.
