Part 2
I was right. There was a senior training session after the kids had trained. It was a serious but light session for them, team patterns, jumping, pad work etc. and a haka practice which is looking awesome. Then the kids disappeared and it was Richard, myself, Tanya, Tim, and Mike who spent a very sweaty hour trying to match the kids 3 hours. Gasping after an hour, we called it quits and headed to the showers and then the bar to put back in all that goodness that the training session had taken out. Dan, Dave, and Mark are at the coaches meeting, but I am sure we can have a beer for them as well. The kids spent the rest of the afternoon in the pool.
You know from my point of view, so far this trip has been not so much about a tournament, but it almost has seemed like a bus tour with some great people and new friends. That, however, all changed this afternoon. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I am not the only adult that has felt it. After the weigh-in, the team and the adults were relaxed, happy…confident.
Then sometime after training today it has all changed and gotten very serious. Not that it wasn’t serious before, don’t get me wrong. I guess this is how things go, having not been to a world champs before. Management are meeting as I type, and there is another team meeting tonight at 9pm. They are planning this and planning that, enlisting the adults help to keep an eye on everything that they can’t see tomorrow
Doug and I have also been planning how we are going to try and cover every event with written words and pictures, we are also enlisting the adults help. I imagine that we are going to be pretty tired tomorrow night, as is the rest of the team.
Our plan is to take as many pictures and write as much as we can at the morning event, then edit them and send the mornings report to Neil at about 1 pm our time, which is 6am for you. I guess that works great as you can read all about it in the morning. At least that’s the plan. Then we will be back at the tournament for the afternoon. We have the two laptops which should give us enough battery time, but have no idea what email is like at the venue, if at all. So we are at this stage resigned to having to wait until we get back to the hotel, as no one has a working cell phone.
Ok, that’s about it. There are several ‘B’ movies on tv, in Spanish no less, which look excellent, and Doug has the sultry tones of George Michael playing in the background. What more can you ask for!
So, I guess it’s goodnight from me, and goodnight from the rest of the team.