World Cup 9: Frustration all around

So, we won our match versus Ireland, but it's a bit of a bittersweet victory. Because of the way the seedings and standing are set up for this tournament, our 24-11 win means that we did not score enough points to offset the point differential of the other 2 and 1 teams. This means that we have a really hard road to travel if we are to still make the semi-finals. Three things must happen and unfortunately we can only control one of them. One, we have to beat Australia and beat them by a lot. Two, Scotland has to get cremated by New Zealand. Three, Canada has to not beat Kazhakstan by too much (or not win at all). It sucks that we have so little control over the situation at this point, but that's what happens with this set-up, which doesn't make any sense in the first place.

Before I talk about the game, I'll talk about last night. It was really great for my family to be at the jersey ceremony, as well as some of my friends from D.C. There's something validating about having that type of support network and having them here to see me. It really makes me feel loved. After the jersey ceremony I went to bed and my dad went and hung out with the NYRC folks and had fun.

Me and my mom at the jersey ceremony


Me and my dad at the jersey ceremony


This morning was fairly quick because we had a noon game, so we left for the field at 9:45 am. We had to get there early because we had the next testing trial for Trie's cortisol/testosterone study. Our warm-ups went really well and carried us into the game, but then things started to get frazzled as we didn't adjust to the refs poor officiating. We killed ourselves on penalties, and also on the franticness associated with knowing that we had to score at least 4 tries to get the bonus point

to stay in it. It's ironic that our place in the seedings has been so effected by
our obsession with making sure we got our bonus point. In the end we stopped playing as a team and started just trying to score as individuals as we worked towards that magic number 4. Needless to say Kathy was not thrilled with us and has informed us that we will be having a hard and grueling training session tomorrow.

Watching the game with my girl


After the match we stayed and watched the other two matches that were after ours. South Afric lost to England, but fought hard, and Australia lost to France in another hard fought game. After the matches we came back to the hotel and ate dinner. Then I went down and hung out with my dad, who's leaving tomorrow. We watched my favorite tv show, Prison Break, and ate cheese tortellini. Now I'm retiring to try and get nice and rested before tomorrow's morning death squad.