Pride of Portree
This team comes from the Isle of Skye, where it was founded in 1292. The ‘Prides’, as they are known to their fans, wear deep-purple robes with a gold star on the chest. Their most famous Chaser, Catriona McCormack, captained the team to two League wins in the 1960s and played for Scotland thirty-six times. Her daughter Meaghan currently plays Keeper for the team. (Her son Kirley is lead guitarist with the popular wizarding band The Weird Sisters.)
Puddlemere United
Founded in 1163, Puddlemere United is the oldest team in the League. Puddlemere has twenty-two League wins and two European Cup triumphs to its credit. Its team anthem ‘Beat Back Those Bludgers, Boys, and Chuck That Quaffle Here’ was recently recorded by the singing sorceress Celestina Warbeck to raise funds for St Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. Puddlemere players wear navy-blue robes bearing the club emblem of two crossed golden bulrushes.
Tutshill Tornados
The Tornados wear sky-blue robes with a double ‘T’ in dark blue on the chest and back. Founded in 1520, the Tornados enjoyed their greatest period of success in the early twentieth century when, captained by Seeker Roderick Plumpton, they won the League Cup five times in a row, a British and Irish record. Roderick Plumpton played Seeker for England twenty-two times and holds the British record for fastest capture of a Snitch during a game (three and a half seconds, against Caerphilly Catapults, 1921).
Wigtown Wanderers
This Borders club was founded in 1422 by the seven offspring of a wizarding butcher named Walter Parkin. The four brothers and three sisters were by all accounts a formidable team who rarely lost a match, partly, it is said, because of the intimidation felt by opposing teams at the sight of Walter standing on the sidelines with a wand in one hand and a meat cleaver in the other. A Parkin descendant has often been found on the Wigtown team over the centuries and, in tribute to their origins, the players wear blood-red robes with a silver meat cleaver upon the chest.
Wimbourne Wasps
The Wimbourne Wasps wear horizontally striped robes of yellow and black with a wasp upon their chests. Founded in 1312, the Wasps have been eighteen times League winners and twice semifinalists in the European Cup. They are alleged to have taken their name from a nasty incident which occurred during a match against the Appleby Arrows in the mid-seventeenth century, when a Beater flying past a tree on the edge of the pitch noticed a wasps’ nest among the branches and batted it towards the Arrows’ Seeker, who was so badly stung that he had to retire from the game. Wimbourne won and thereafter adopted the wasp as their lucky emblem. Wasp fans (also known as ‘Stingers’) traditionally buzz loudly to distract opposing Chasers when they are taking penalties.
Chapter Eight
The Spread of Quidditch Worldwide
Europe
QUIDDITCH WAS WELL established in Ireland by the fourteenth century, as proved by Zacharias Mumps’s account of a match in 1385: ‘A team of Warlocks from Cork flew over for a game in Lancashire and did offend the locals by beating their heroes soundly. The Irishmen knew tricks with the Quaffle that had not been seen in Lancashire before and had to flee the village for fear of their lives when the crowd drew out their wands and gave chase.’
Diverse sources show that the game had spread into other parts of Europe by the early fifteenth century. We know that Norway was an early convert to the game (could Goodwin Kneen’s cousin Olaf have introduced the game there?) because of the verse written by the poet Ingolfr the Iambic in the early 1400s:
Oh, the thrill of the chase as I soar through the air
With the Snitch up ahead and the wind in my hair
As I draw ever closer, the crowd gives a shout
But then comes a Bludger and I am knocked out.
Around the same time, the French wizard Malecrit wrote the following lines in his play Hélas, Je me suis Transfiguré Les Pieds (‘Alas, I’ve Transfigured My Feet’):
GRENOUILLE: I cannot go with you to the market today, Crapaud.
CRAPAUD: But Grenouille, I cannot carry the cow alone.
GRENOUILLE: You know, Crapaud, that I am to be Keeper this morning. Who will stop the Quaffle if I do not?
The year 1473 saw the first ever Quidditch World Cup, though the nations represented were all European. The nonappearance of teams from more distant nations may be put down to the collapse of owls bearing letters of invitation, the reluctance of those invited to make such a long and perilous journey, or perhaps a simple preference for staying at home.
The final between Transylvania and Flanders has gone down in history as the most violent of all time and many of the fouls then recorded had never been seen before – for instance, the Transfiguration of a Chaser into a polecat, the attempted decapitation of a Keeper with a broadsword and the release, from under the robes of the Transylvanian Captain, of a hundred blood-sucking vampire bats.
The World Cup has since been held every four years, though it was not until the seventeenth century that non-European teams turned up to compete. In 1652 the European Cup was established, and it has been played every three years since.
Of the many superb European teams, perhaps the Bulgarian Vratsa Vultures is most renowned. Seven times European Cup winners, the Vratsa Vultures are undoubtedly one of the most thrilling teams in the world to watch, pioneers of the long goal (shooting from well outside the scoring area) and always willing to give new players a chance to make a name for themselves.
In France the frequent League winners the Quiberon Quafflepunchers are famed for their flamboyant play as much as for their shocking-pink robes. In Germany we find the Heidelberg Harriers, the team that the Irish Captain Darren O’Hare once famously said was ‘fiercer than a dragon and twice as clever’. Luxembourg, always a strong Quidditch nation, has given us the Bigonville Bombers, celebrated for their offensive strategies and always among the top goalscorers. The Portuguese team Braga Broomfleet have recently broken through into the top levels of the sport with their ground-breaking Beater-marking system; and the Polish Grodzisk Goblins gave us arguably the world’s most innovative Seeker, Josef Wronski.
Australia and New Zealand
Quidditch was introduced to New Zealand some time in the seventeenth century, allegedly by a team of European herbologists who had gone on an expedition there to research magical plants and fungi. We are told that after a long day’s toil collecting samples, these witches and wizards let off steam by playing Quidditch under the bemused gaze of the local magical community. The New Zealand Ministry of Magic has certainly spent much time and money preventing Muggles getting hold of Maori art of that period which clearly depicts white wizards playing Quidditch (these carvings and paintings are now on display at the Ministry of Magic in Wellington).
The spread of Quidditch to Australia is believed to have occurred some time in the eighteenth century. Australia may be said to be an ideal Quidditch-playing territory, given the great expanses of uninhabited outback where Quidditch pitches may be established.
Antipodean teams have always thrilled European crowds with their speed and showmanship. Among the best are the Moutohora Macaws (New Zealand), with their famous red, yellow and blue robes and their phoenix mascot, Sparky. The Thundelarra Thunderers and the Woollongong Warriors have dominated the Australian League for the best part of a century. Their enmity is legendary among the Australian magical community, so much so that a popular response to an unlikely claim or boast is ‘Yeah, and I think I’ll volunteer to ref the next Thunderer–Warrior game’.