Saturday 19th July 2008
After some earlier morning Golden Gate Bridge Gazing (or 'peering through the fog at a mass of cables hanging from the clouds' as it could more accurately be phrased) - the Holmes, Neild, Glover, Tatham, Lavis car unusually found itself at the fields before any other. An unusual situation in anyone's book.
Tim Lavis "So what's the big deal about this bridge huh??"
The rest of the convoy arrived shortly after and before long our opposition: San Francisco JAM arrived. They had already called yellow for jersey colour, which suited us just fine as due to some form of "technical error" - see Gaia website for that one - we only had the green and green strip. Still we looked mighty fine when we were all cleated up and ready to run.
JAM are a serious US team. They made semi-finals at UPA nationals last year and are an established West Coast powerhouse.
Dingos and JAM
The game began scrappily with some basic errors from both sides, and many of the Dingos looked like they had stepped off a 14hr flight yesterday ... which the majority of us had. Things started to warm up when Tubby got a massive double handed high block between two seppos that took me back to the Yorsten block of 05 Nats final. Our offense started clicking a bit better and we managed to take the first half 6-5 (halves being time capped at 45mins). We decided to try out the Japanese zone we had been practiced, and with a high floaty pull and a hard run down, the JAM offense caught the disc, had a look at the zone, and called time out on stall 8 without throwing a pass. The zone remains a work in progress, but certainly has potential to throw quality opposition off balance.
In the second half JAM begin applying greater pressure around the disc and on our downfield cutters. Ken Shepherd was a standout, solid with disc in hand and two memorable 20-30m forehand into-the-wind forehand throws for goal. Jonathan "Tats" Tatham came off the bench in the second half and was inspirational with his hard cutting and solid throws including a Newcastle special to Tim Lavis who skied some chump to take a very high goal.
Things remained tight going point for point and before you knew it (well before this reporter/player realised it) it was timecap at JAM 11 - Dingos 10. We finished the point with a score and it was game to 11. I don't remember too much of the last couple of points, we made it to 12 all doublegame point and we were on D. We came out on man and put a lot of pressure on every pass but a bladey hammer that split two dingos and somehow landed in the outstretched hands of a laying-out JAM player sealed the win for the locals.
To say we were bitterly disappointed would be a gross understatement of the face Mike Neild gave me as we cooled down after the game. Having said that, we were generally happy with how we played. Our man-on-man defence was very strong across the board and the team is already starting to knit together into an even stronger unit.
A highlight of the game today was the support from the Barramundis, who are in town and begin their pre-tour in the next couple of days. It was fantastic to have some Aussie support on the sideline and it bodes well for Vancouver when there is going to be a massive Australian contingent.
Hospitality in San Fran has been sensational. We contacted our billet by phone as we were driving to his address, the conversation went something like this:
Mike Neild - "So it's Mike from Australia here Seth ... how are you going"
Seth " ........ "
Mike Neild "No.. no.. we're in San Fran now"
Seth "......"
Mike Neild "Yeah, so there's actually 5 of us ... not 3"
Seth "....."
Mike Neild "Well we were thinking of going out to dinner somewhere if you're keen to join us"
Seth "...."
Mike Neild ".....really"
Seth "...."
Mike Neild " ..... no ... no none of us are Vegetarian"
Seth "...."
Mike Neild "well that sounds sweet, we'll see you in 20mins"
(hangs up)
Mike Neild - to the rest of the car - "so Seth's cooking us spicy sausage and rugala pasta sauce and we're all good to stay there."
Rest of car - "sweeeeeeet"
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