Underdogs from Uddevalla crowned Swedish national champions for first time

Loyal players gather round misanthropic coach for historic victory.

At the Swedish National Championships in Borlänge this year, Uddevalla underwater rugby club—also known as Team Super Fast Pat—stood at the top of the podium for the first time ever. Uddevalla overcame Polisen in group play and went on to beat Triton 1-0 in the final. Instead of Malmö repeating yet again, Uddevalla booked its ticket to Champions Cup.

The coach who orchestrated this triumph, Patrick Nilsson ”Misanthrope” Sonett, does not take social media too seriously. On his Facebook profile, he declares himself a hater of humanity, employed “as a slave at Sweden Slavery Incorporated”. Sonett began poking fun at social media the moment he joined the platform.

Still, there is one place online that he does not joke—the club’s internal Facebook group. There he consistently reminds members to sign up for the approaching week’s underwater rugby practices. Sonett takes his sport seriously.

People should do what they are good at, not fit into a mold or strategy that holds them back.
—Patrick Sonett

Uddevalla, around one hour’s drive north of Gothenburg, has a population of around 36,000. During the 80s and 90s when Sweden was the world’s top underwater rugby nation in the men’s game, towns like Uddevalla contributed to vibrant regional leagues across the country. However, over the last two decades, Swedish diving and rugby clubs have dried up and crumbled away. Sonett’s club was no exception.

In 2012, Uddevalla played in the national championship for the first time and then promptly disbanded. However, several players moved on to other clubs. One of these, Esurf, took third place in the national championships in 2016 and 2017. In 2020, the Uddevalla old-timers—Johan Aronsson, Emanuel Johansson, Emil Haugen, Niklas Waldäng, Henrik Waldäng and Sonett—pulled themselves together and revived the club.

The reborn Uddevalla took third place at the national championships that year. In 2021, it climbed up to second. And this year, first. So, from 8 years of non-existence, Uddevalla suddenly went on a three-year rampage, from bronze to silver to gold. To do this it overcame Stockholm’s Polisen and Malmö Triton, the two established big city clubs that had ruled the sport’s top tier in Sweden in the modern era.

How the historical final went down

The Swedish National Championships are a two day affair. Over a weekend, 4 teams play a round robin. On Saturday, Uddevalla lost to Malmö 2-4 but beat Polisen 4-0. Since Triton defeated Polisen, Uddevalla placed second overall and went through to Sunday’s final on day two. 

In the deciding game, Sonett and his teammates had two strategic points of focus. On defense, they forechecked aggressively, taking care to keep the ball out of the hands of Malmö’s Andreas Bergenholtz and Linus Norén, Triton’s two greatest offensive threats, as much as possible.

On offense, they scrummed on the surface while pushing forward. In the final, one can often see Uddevalla take the ball as far forward as possible beneath the water and then drag the defenders up to the top. Think of it as a Scandinavian variation on the Betta style.

An expert analyst (who wished to remain anonymous) described Uddevalla in the final:

“They adapted their tactics to negate a free flowing game. You can see Emanuel [Johansson] guarding the ball a lot and Super Fast Pat just waiting for the refs to look away enough so he could dive to the basket and try to push the goalie off. The signal would be when someone strong enough, often Bulten [Niklas Waldäng], could mount an attack on the Triton basket.

“But they played very well defensively in the final too, so that’s probably the main reason they won. The goal they got was classic attacking play, enough bodies put forward and [it] created the advantage and space to leave Erik Sörstadius free with the goalie’s back.”

Sonett himself summarized succinctly: “We managed to hold them to zero and jam in a single goal.”

Uddevalla in the context of Swedish rugby history

As rugby expert Benjamin Westerfjell put it, Swedish rugby once enjoyed a “golden age”. That was back in the 80s and 90s. Since then the sport has faded. At the World Championships on the men’s side Sweden has gone steadily downward:

• World Championships (men)
• Fredericia 2003 Gold
• Bari 2007 Silver
• Helsinki 2011 Bronze
• Cali 2015 4th place
• Graz 2019 5th place

This pattern coincides with the contraction of the sport at the club level. Many of the clubs that medalled in the national championships through the years—Växjö, Barracuda, Polar, Diver Sven’s Divers Diving Club, Näcken, Sydkusten, Telge Play Boys—have long vanished from domestic league play. The level of competition has fallen as a result.

The club die-off exacerbated the orphaned player dilemma, those whose clubs could no longer field a 12-man squad. The solution to rescue the orphans has been to alter the rules for club affiliation. Membership has become a loose concept.

The fourth team at the 2022 Championships, Stil-Björnarna, a pickup team of juniors and young adults seeking experience, surrendered 115 goals without scoring a single point in 4 games. One can say that the competition was really between three teams, not four clubs.

Polisen and Triton, actual organic club teams, had had Euroleague competition to keep themselves sharp in recent years. Moreover, the pair had history on their side. Although Polisen lost 6 finals in a row against Triton between 2009 and 2014, it went on to win 4 national titles, including last year’s. As for Triton, well, it stands out as one of the greatest clubs in the history of the sport. This year it was seeking its 19th national title. But neither could break the gritty defense of Uddevalla.

Sonett, a 42-year-old former submission grappling and MMA fighter, has the gift of being able to inspire. Besides holding together a core of veterans, he coached several juniors on to the elite track. Five current national team players and one reservist—Victor Lundin, Emanuel Johansson, Ivo Lundin-Hatje, Anton Sagström, Elin Strand and Sophia Axelsson—all spent time in the school of Super Fast Pat.

Appeal of the misanthrope

“He has a rather dark sense of humor but if one understands him, one realizes that really he is a very kind person who lives and breathes underwater rugby,” said Elin Strand, a forward on the Swedish national team.

Strand attended a marine biology gymnasium 50 minutes drive from Uddevalla. There a group of teenagers took up underwater rugby on their own in a shallow pool without any coach. When Sonett learned about them he invited them to his club practices in 2014. Several went directly on to the Swedish junior national team, although they had not played long. Strand remarked:

“Pat was in reality my first real coach and I regret that we only had one year with Pat’s club before I graduated, for it was during that time that I learned to play underwater rugby.”

Super Fast Pat fast? Strand, a former competitive swimmer, laughed:

“He prefers smaller pools, where one can play more and swim less.”

So, Sonett is neither an aquatic Flash Gordon nor a hater of humanity. He prefers to dictate the game’s tempo around a very physical playing style.

Sonett, whose father played underwater rugby with a club called Hydro, grew up with the sport. By his own account in his early 20s he began to take rugby seriously.

His approach to teaching rugby, perhaps influenced by his martial arts experience, rests on the systematic breakdown of skills.

“He had a different focus for every practice: ways to score goals, how to do a swimout, how one should think as a forward defending and attacking,” recalled Stand.

Anton Sagström, a Swedish national team player who also had Sonett as his first coach, usually plays in the national championships with his home club Linköping. However, the 9-time national champion club did not participate in the elite league this year, so Sagström joined Uddevalla.

He praised Sonett’s approach:

“He is forthright and direct; he gives you the feedback you need without making it complicated. He explains in a way that you can comprehend. Above all he is a very good player.”

In the national championships this year Sonett did not introduce new things, according to Sagstöm:

“We did the things we knew worked, which is a good recipe to win matches. The older Uddevalla players motivate because they always do their job with every exchange and so as a team mate, you have to do yours. That’s all there is to it.”

Uddevalla´s loss to Polisen in last year’s final galvanized the club to train even harder. Victor Lundin and Erik Sörstadius could not play with their home club (Felix) so both switched to Uddevalla. Lundin joked about the club’s beloved coach.

“Pat has motivated me by always looking very bitter, so I felt that something that could put a smile on his lips would be gold in worth. When we had finally beaten Triton, his otherwise gloomy face broke into a smile that lasted at least 5 minutes. Clearly it was worth the effort.”

Sonett´s influence on Swedish rugby resonates through the players he schooled. Lundin and Sörstadius recently took on the responsibility of coaching the Swedish U21 men’s team.

“We’ll do it for the Gold and Blue, Swedish rugby and the coaches who inspired us, like Super Fast Pat,” he said.