World Cup 7: Missed opportunities

Well, I suppose the title says it all... we missed a lot of opportunities during our match yesterday. We lost to England 18-0, but the score really doesn't reflect the way the game went. For the first 60 mintues of the game we were deadlocked at 0-0, when then scored off a penalty. Then they managed to score two tries plus one more penalty kick. We fought really hard but we didn't capitalize on the times when we had offensive opportunity. I was disappointed in the way the lineouts went and towards the end of the match my own loss of focus in the scrum. I let myself get bogged down in the referee's poor officiating of the set-piece and it took a toll on my performance. I guess it's good to be able to appreciate that and to know that it's a critical piece for me to work on going forward in this tournament. By and large I think we really surprised the English who I think really were planning on walking over us, and we let them know that we were going to make them play.

Phaidra hits a tackle


Laura takes on their flanker


After the game I got informed that I had been randomly selected for drug-testing, so I got to spend the next hour or so being supervised to insure that I wasn't taking anything I wasn't supposed to before the test. My chaperone even had to come to the shower with me. After the testing I was feeling pretty faint and queasy because I hadn't eaten anything and had missed the post-match socialization/food while being in the anti-doping tent. Luckily, Baja had a half of a protein bar, which probably saved the lives of those sitting directly around me in the van.

When we got back to the hotel we went directly to dinner where I had to force food into my body because I'd gotten to that hunger point where I was feeling nauseous. After dinner many folks went down to socialize with the throngs of friends and family who had made the journey up, while others of us had to go see Doc for treatment. I was in the latter crew and by the time I got out of there it was past 10 and I just wanted to go to sleep. I was feeling both the effects of my earlier lack of food, as well as the general malaise of losing in a game that could have been won.

This morning I felt better about things after having a chance to sleep and recover. We had a good breakfast and then went to a pool recovery session lead by Tracy. It involved a lot of splashing and twisting, but overall I feel much better for it. The climax of the recovery came in the form of a race between Phaidra and I... there was no contest :)

After the pool we had a team meeting to debrief the game as we hadn't yet had an opportunity for that. We talked about where we had met our goals, where we hadn't met them, what we needed to improve on going forward. We're going to watch the game later this afternoon, and I think until we actually see it many of us don't really know how to assess the match.

Now some people are heading our with family and friends to hang out, while others are heading to the West Edmonton Mall (apparently the biggest mall in the world). I'm going to meet one of my college friends/teammates, Michelle, to catch up and I'll finish this up once I get back.

So apparently my day went on and on and now it's 11:30pm and I'm trying to wind down the day. It was really good to get a chance to see my friend Michelle, who I haven't gotten a chance to hang out with since summer of 2003. We went down to downtown Edmonton and walked around. When I got back it was 4:15 and was just in time for our team meeting to watch the video of yesterday's game. It was good to watch because I was able to see that I had more positive moments than I remembered. We are always our worst critics.

From the video session we went directly into dinner and then into another video session. This time it was to watch a game tape of Ireland vs the US from our UK tour in January so that we could get an idea of their weaknesses and strength and just general patterns of play. After that it was chill time until my treatment time with Doc at 10:00pm... now after a little late night prop-talk (Annie, Farrah, Carrie, and I) it's time for bed. I'm excited because both my parents are arriving tomorrow. My dad's only staying through the Ireland match (selections get announced tomorrow morning) and my mom's staying until the bitter end (the 18th).