World Cup 18: The end

Well, I’m back in the country and starting to get back into the swing of the “real” world. I’m back at my usual haunts, the Temescal Café, having some coffee and working online. So, now it’s time for the final wind down from World Cup. The deep, meaningful, poignant piece on what it all means. Unfortunately, I’m not real sure of that myself. Being back home and slipping back into working and all that stuff seems somehow anti-climactic for what just happened. World Cup has been something that I have been training for and striving towards for the past six years or so. The fact that it has come and gone and life just falls back into the previous status quo seems somehow asynchronous. It feels like there should be some sort of transition or change, not just a return to normal. I guess that’s something to think about. It’s also hard not knowing what will happen next for the National Team. We played so well over the past two games and I just want to keep going with that momentum. I want there to be another World Cup sooner than four years so that we can really put everything that started to come together into play now. If we had played as well the entire tournament as we played against Australia and Scotland, who knows what we would have done.

Last night I went to practice with Berkeley and was two minds about it. The practice was very contact oriented and I was not really ready to be hitting again, yet, but the pace was slower than at the International level so it all evened out. It’s interesting to come back and be kicking right into the Club season because I spent a lot of time during the last bit of my training for World Cup talking myself through the hardest workouts by promising myself a break afterwards. That doesn’t seem to be an option, but I need to really find some new motivation to get back into the hard training. Hopefully after a few more recovery days my body will be ready to go back to the grind.

So, I guess that’s it. World Cup happened and it was amazing. It was the best rugby I’ve played in my life, both individually, as well as team rugby. I hope that the inspiration of playing that much beautiful rugby will carry us through the club season. Either way… it was one of the best experiences in my life. Now I have to reassess and set some new goals and aspirations to keep my energies focused and on track. On a side note, I’m going to try and be better about keeping this blog slightly more up to date than just writing after each rugby tour… but we’ll see how that goes.