So only 4 months have passed since i last blogged, the combination of various things have meant i couldn't do things sooner. I also apologise in advance if this turns into something the same length as The Lord of The Rings trilogy. So here goes my attempt at casting my mind back to my last few months in Sweden.
February- February brought the last month of the regular season and on paper our hardest month of the season, with 3 away games and only 1 home game. We had an undefeated home record in 2011, whereas we had only won once on the road since the turn of the year, so the trips to Falkoping, Linkoping and Sollentuna where always going to be difficult, especially with everyone in the race for a high seeding for the playoffs. To cut the month short, we went to Falkoping, played well in the 1st set and won easily, we were up in the 2nd set, and thought we would sit back and relax as the game was in the bag. However it wasnt, we lost the 2nd shortly followed by the 3rd and 4th set and with that another loss on the road in 2011. The following week brought a comfortable 3-0 home win against Habo. Then came a big away game for the race for 3rd seed, against our old rivals Linkoping, we lost at there place all 4 times last season (3 times in the play offs), we were determined to finally get a win in the massive gym. After losing the 1st set, we served them off the court in the 2nd including possibly my best service run of my entire life, which included 3 aces. However, as seemed our routine away from home in 2011 we lost the 3rd and then got walked over in the 4th, so yet another loss away from the jungle and another bloody loss to Linkoping, this also meant are hopes of getting the 3rd seed where hugely damaged, and that was confirmed when we lost away to the number 1 team sollentuna 3-0 the following saturday. This meant we would have the 'hardest' play off quarter final against Falkoping. This was there 2nd year in the big league and the best set of Swedish Junior for a long time, also they had never won or even taken a set in our gym and we had never won in theres, so it had all the prospects of long series. As it was a long time ago i dont really remember anything that happend off the court in the month of February
March- so March madness began with the Mother coming across to see the frozen sea of Helsingborg and to watch game 1 of Quarter finals of the play offs. The game went to form and we won 3-0 (a pattern will start emerging soon), we then traveled up to falkoping a few days later, in front of a decent crowd for them we went down 3-2 and 17-15 in a tight 5th set, we even had match point, but one of our guys made a service error. After the game we got a bollocking from our coach and some stern words from our sports director, there was also two more bollockings before the 3rd game, so the sense of dejavu was all around, 1-1 in games just like last season, and the win streaks at home for each team hadnt been broken. The pattern continued with us winning 3-0 again at home, this gave us the chance to travel to falkoping and win the series on there home court, however no streaks where ended as we suffered yet another loss this time 3-1, the only upside as we talked in the locker room after was that the final game was at our place and there record at our place wasnt exactly prolific. So on a sunny Thursday evening the cliches were rolled out again that are always linked with final game deciders. Despite a bit of an early wobble we won the first 2 sets easy, then found ourselves in a bit of hole/thought we would make it interesting in the 3rd set, which we managed to block our way out of, and yet again win 3-0. There was more relief than celebration and to top it all the sun had turned to snow storms. And snow means slush, and i hate slush. So due to the nature of us having to play all 5 games of our series and our next oppents the Number 1 seed sollentuna had dusted there series off in 3 games, it meant we were on the bus the next day to travel to stockholm. After the travel day came game day, The first 2 sets were pretty much a write off as i think we were all still bollockesed from the previous 5 games in 11 days, we came to life a bit in the 3rd but went down 33-31, so after a pretty quick trip home and a few whiskeys to reflect on things, we got a few days rest and time to recharge for the 2nd game at home, we had a great crowd in and dispite losing the 1st we battled back to take the next 3 straight to win 3-1 and tie the series at 1-1. The game was quality purely for the fact that our back up opposite played the full game and played the game of his life and rightly so got a standing ovation at the end of the game and MVP honours, throw in the fact he is a local boy, it was real roy of the rovers stuff. So back on the road we went to stockholm and in search of the eternal win on the road, however the pattern continued as we went down 3-2. It was a strange game, the vibe from the bench wasnt its normal self and we all seemed to be scratching our heads as to what was going on. After the game we got a bollocking, a few small points that made where true, however the overall bollocking we didnt feel was warranted, we had just lost in a tie break to a team that had lost one league game all season, and to that point in the season had not lost at home. As a result when we were talking amongst ourselves the mood was quite buoyant, it didnt feel like another mediocre away performance that seemed to be our 2011 repertoire. All this meant that the game at home was a must win, otherwise that was our season over and the dreams of winning the gold would be over. With a packed home crowd, we were all up for it, however the first 2 sets we always seemed to be playing catch up and only seemed to fight when the set was 'beyond' us, so 2-0 down in a must win game, we at least wanted to go out with a fight, a few tweaks and we came out flying, and into the fact there best player/most annoying/up his own arse/captain got a yellow card only fueled our third set dominance, the only down side was that after getting a yellow, he should of got a red for refusing to talk to the first ref when he was summoned, we were grateful of the yellow card though as the 3 times we played up in stockholm the refs bottled it . Winning the 3rd set was our only highlight though as we sort of lost the 4th set by a wimper and with that our first defeat at home in 2011 meant our season was over and just like last season we had fallen to the number 1 seed in the semi finals yet again. However for sollentuna despite dominating the league they lost to Falkenberg in the finals, thus completing the treble for Falkenberg.
Looking back it was of course a fun season and of course it was filled with ifs and buts, but everything is. It seemed for us it was a season of two halves, before xmas we couldnt stop winning away after xmas we couldnt really buy an important away victory. Before xmas we were 3-2 at home and 4-0 away from home. After losing the 2 games at Grand prix at the start of the new year we then went 4-0 at home and 1-4 away, then come play off time we went 4-1 at home and 0-4 away. I think the only team with a shit away record that still went on to win a championship was Manchester United this season. All this meant that April was a chance to party with all the swedes, celebrate my birthday, which involved a certain swedish girl finding an interesting place to throw up. The options she had were the bathroom, the balcony or Joe's closet with all his clothes in, you can guess which one she picked. Also april meant watching the EVS girls yet again lose out 3-2 in the Final to Katrineholm, they did well to come back from 2-0 in the series, but the 5th game they seemed to fall apart, although i dont remember much as we were in the middle of a 4 day drinking spree, which included one of my team mates sister getting really drunk and falling over repeatedly. After one last party at the EVS end of season gala, it was time to return back to England and leave the place i have called 'home' for the past 18 or so months and leave all the people that i had come in to contact with. If i wasnt so hungover i may have been a bit more emotional on that saturday morning when i was leaving. It is weird leaving people that have had an impact on your life in such a short time and not knowing when you will see them again. So in no particular order Joe, Kalle, Anton, Niklas, Martin, The Bjorcks, Tetatoo, Barbie, Carlos (for the 1st year),Anette the Spazzer, Emmie, Iza, Frojd + wife to be & the cat, Robin, Muck you crazy crazy japanese girl, Svante (even if you support liverpool), Kristian, Erin for making me and Joes life so easy to abuse you, Polska for being weird and the guy in Engelholm that makes the Zlatan pizza. If i missed you off the list, its not because i dont like, but there are to many people to name and i would be here all night.
So that is my farewell to sweden and the end of my "First country to play abroad in" chapter. Thus meaning a start of a new chapter. Luckily for me it is in a place where i hope there is less snow and the language may be a little less gay than swedish. In Mid may i had the pleasure of flying to paris to try out for a team based 30 minutes outside the centre of Paris, the town was nice, it sits along the river seine, its quiet small, the president of the club says there isnt much to do there, but i counted at least 4 bars that run along the river. After a few days training, a trip to paris and the coach and president forcing german beer down me before i flew home, they said they would like me to play on there team for next season. So where one door closes another one opens as they say.
Away from volleyball, United ended up walking it to the title despite being the worst team ever to win it, where as the team that plays the best football in the world but wins fuck all ended up winning fuck all. Then the real best team in the world pissed on united in the champions league final. Zlatan was re-elected king of sweden after winning serie A with AC Milan, i still cant get over the sight of Kevin Prince Boateng playing in the champions league and doing the moonwalk. I will go on record and say I hate the Boston Bruins/Zdeno Chara and the people that run the NHL, am pretty sure that if on a night out i rammed somebodys head in to a metal pole, which in turn resulted in that person being knocked out and suffering a broken neck, i would expect some sort of consequences, yet it seems if you do that whilst wearing a Bruins uniform you will not be banned, you will also go on to to win the stanley cup and your captain who should not have been playing will get to lift the trophy, whilst the guy who you almost killed missed the rest of the season and couldnt help his teams pursuit of Lord Stanley. Also I hope Lebron never wins a championship, highly unlikely i know, but after what happend last summer, it was karma Dirk and the Mavs did what they did.
If i havent bored you to sleep/death/tears/rage, thanks for reading, am sure the new season will bring some interesting things about france, the one thing i do know about it though, there kebab is shit.
Monday 27 June 2011
Saturday 5 February 2011
Daiquiri's, Rut's, Comebacks and a New year
So after 2010 ended in a slightly depressing way, 2011 began in a slightly happier way. New years eve will live in the memory for all the right reasons. New friends, old friends, alcohol, various coloured clothing for the Rubiks cube theme and all of Denmarks frozen fruit, made for a happy new year. Antons Strawberry Daiquiri making skills do leave a lot to desired, with most of it ending up on the windows, radiators and the floor and not a lot in an actual cup.
After new years, we had a few days of training before we embarked on a road trip to the stockholm area were we would play 4 games (2 at Grand prix, a practice game and a league game) in 5 days, taking in 3 different town. So we arrived in Katrineholm after driving through a few snow storms and a car deciding to fall off the road down a ditch, just in time for our evening practice slot to get the journey out of us. The next day was semi final day against Falkenberg. The game certainly wont make any game of the season DVD's, it was a scrap affair with both teams fair from playing their best volleyball, Falkenberg just about managing to step up slightly and ended up beating us 3-1. The dressing room after the game was filled with a lot of frustration, from my point of view it felt like we tried to hard to put in a good performance, which in a logical sense would mean that we would win. However sports not like that, sometimes you have to learn to win ugly and do the things that matter at the right time to get the result. Scraping tight wins when its 'squeaky bum time' is what wins you titles as proven many times by Manchester united and Chelsea in their pursuit for silverware. Only a few of our guys could hold their heads high after the semi final and it was mostly the guys that came in from the bench. So the next day we had a bronze medal game and not the gold medal game we had been hoping for. The bronze game was against Tierp, whom we would face in a few days time in the league so the result would be important psychologicaly. The game itself wasnt a classic, it was played in a smaller hall, the atmosphere was dead and it felt more like a practice game, with both teams trying a few things out, whilst trying not to lose, we ended up losing 3-2 and with it our 4th defeat in a row. After the game the feeling in the dressing room wasnt great, the older players were frustrated that we had lost our winning touch, but most of us had been through spells like this. The rookies on our team i think blamed themselves to much and this was a new thing to them, especially after we had started the season so strongly, mentally they were not used to a run of bad defeats and how to get out of it. After our game, we watched the EVS girls walk there way to another GP title and then Falkenberg upset the odds and beat Sollentuna easily 3-0. We then stayed in Katrineholm over night before making the trip across to Stockholm, we played Sollentuna in a practice game on the friday, then on the saturday we did some touristy stuff and walked around the city. Stockholm was nice, although I swear if you lit a match in the posh shopping centre we went in half the people would melt. After that we traveled north up to Tierp, after an early morning practice and a few hours sleep it was game time and a chance to end our run of 4 straight defeats and try to reclaim 2nd place. Easier said than done. We came under constant pressure from the service line, so it was hard for me and joe to get in to the game in an attack sense, and it seemed only one of our outsides could kill the ball. We lost 3-1, the only highlight for me was getting 7 blocks, 5 of them on the same guy. So the 7 hour trip home to cap off the 6 day road trip wasnt exactly what i would call fun.
After a day off we re-grouped, talked a few things over, and prepared for our first home game of 2011 against rivals Hylte. We went out with the mentality of win at what ever cost i.e if it comes to it win ugly. After half a set we seemed to find our rhythm and before long we had wrapped up a convincing 3-0 win and I won 2 new towels for getting MVP. After the game we received some news that our Physio and ex-Orkelljunga outside hitter had signed with the club to play again as our libero, thus giving us a more experienced player in a position the club has struggled with over the past few years. Buoyed by this news and on the back of win, we headed in to a home show down with Falkenberg with the winner taken over 2nd spot. THe build up was all going fine until friday practice, when i was running backwards after a ball and my ankle gave way. Friday night was spent on crutches, saturday spent lying on the sofa with my foot in a bag of ice. Sunday came around and I wanted to play, i took painkillers and got tapped up, but after a set and a bit i wasnt feeling comfortable and that was my game over. The game itself was a bit strange, Falkenberg seemed to be going through the motions and we couldnt find an extra gear and found ourselves 2-0 down, then suddenly things started to click, the confidence was back amongst everyone and we pulled out our 3rd 3-2 win of the season (all 3 after being 0-2 down). We closed out January with two 3-0 wins against the 2 bottom teams. We now are 8 points from 1st place and 2 points clear of 3rd as the race for play off seedings enter the last month. We have 4 games left and 3 of them on the road, all in difficult place to play.
Moving away from the volleyball and I still cant get my head around Liverpool paying £35 million for Andy Carroll. There is no way in hell he is worth more than David Villa who is arguably the best striker in the world at the moment. There is also no way is worth more than Nedved, Vieri (in his prime) and Buffon who are some of the best players of the generation. My only guess is that who ever made the call to bid for him put the decimal point in the wrong place and actually wanted to bid £3.5 million, either that or Liverpool thought it was a game of Football Manager and accidentally clicked 'make offer' after they got Newcastles response to their enquiry. Another thing, the audacity of Newcastle to knock back the 1st offer was something and to raise the price, but for Liverpool to agree to the raise was something of pure stupidity.
Those calling for Delneri to go after the Udinese game, move a long, give the man some time to build his squad and his system. Think Sir Alex and Wenger (to a certain degree) are good examples of what happens when you give a manager more then 6 months to put together a half decent team.
Think thats about it, cant remember any one doing anything that stupid this month, havent seen the girls so cant say anything about them, Joe has behaved, Lennie will get the car stuck in snow every 5 minutes, Sebbe needs a phone stapled to his face so he doesnt lose another one.
great tackle
average ;)
After new years, we had a few days of training before we embarked on a road trip to the stockholm area were we would play 4 games (2 at Grand prix, a practice game and a league game) in 5 days, taking in 3 different town. So we arrived in Katrineholm after driving through a few snow storms and a car deciding to fall off the road down a ditch, just in time for our evening practice slot to get the journey out of us. The next day was semi final day against Falkenberg. The game certainly wont make any game of the season DVD's, it was a scrap affair with both teams fair from playing their best volleyball, Falkenberg just about managing to step up slightly and ended up beating us 3-1. The dressing room after the game was filled with a lot of frustration, from my point of view it felt like we tried to hard to put in a good performance, which in a logical sense would mean that we would win. However sports not like that, sometimes you have to learn to win ugly and do the things that matter at the right time to get the result. Scraping tight wins when its 'squeaky bum time' is what wins you titles as proven many times by Manchester united and Chelsea in their pursuit for silverware. Only a few of our guys could hold their heads high after the semi final and it was mostly the guys that came in from the bench. So the next day we had a bronze medal game and not the gold medal game we had been hoping for. The bronze game was against Tierp, whom we would face in a few days time in the league so the result would be important psychologicaly. The game itself wasnt a classic, it was played in a smaller hall, the atmosphere was dead and it felt more like a practice game, with both teams trying a few things out, whilst trying not to lose, we ended up losing 3-2 and with it our 4th defeat in a row. After the game the feeling in the dressing room wasnt great, the older players were frustrated that we had lost our winning touch, but most of us had been through spells like this. The rookies on our team i think blamed themselves to much and this was a new thing to them, especially after we had started the season so strongly, mentally they were not used to a run of bad defeats and how to get out of it. After our game, we watched the EVS girls walk there way to another GP title and then Falkenberg upset the odds and beat Sollentuna easily 3-0. We then stayed in Katrineholm over night before making the trip across to Stockholm, we played Sollentuna in a practice game on the friday, then on the saturday we did some touristy stuff and walked around the city. Stockholm was nice, although I swear if you lit a match in the posh shopping centre we went in half the people would melt. After that we traveled north up to Tierp, after an early morning practice and a few hours sleep it was game time and a chance to end our run of 4 straight defeats and try to reclaim 2nd place. Easier said than done. We came under constant pressure from the service line, so it was hard for me and joe to get in to the game in an attack sense, and it seemed only one of our outsides could kill the ball. We lost 3-1, the only highlight for me was getting 7 blocks, 5 of them on the same guy. So the 7 hour trip home to cap off the 6 day road trip wasnt exactly what i would call fun.
After a day off we re-grouped, talked a few things over, and prepared for our first home game of 2011 against rivals Hylte. We went out with the mentality of win at what ever cost i.e if it comes to it win ugly. After half a set we seemed to find our rhythm and before long we had wrapped up a convincing 3-0 win and I won 2 new towels for getting MVP. After the game we received some news that our Physio and ex-Orkelljunga outside hitter had signed with the club to play again as our libero, thus giving us a more experienced player in a position the club has struggled with over the past few years. Buoyed by this news and on the back of win, we headed in to a home show down with Falkenberg with the winner taken over 2nd spot. THe build up was all going fine until friday practice, when i was running backwards after a ball and my ankle gave way. Friday night was spent on crutches, saturday spent lying on the sofa with my foot in a bag of ice. Sunday came around and I wanted to play, i took painkillers and got tapped up, but after a set and a bit i wasnt feeling comfortable and that was my game over. The game itself was a bit strange, Falkenberg seemed to be going through the motions and we couldnt find an extra gear and found ourselves 2-0 down, then suddenly things started to click, the confidence was back amongst everyone and we pulled out our 3rd 3-2 win of the season (all 3 after being 0-2 down). We closed out January with two 3-0 wins against the 2 bottom teams. We now are 8 points from 1st place and 2 points clear of 3rd as the race for play off seedings enter the last month. We have 4 games left and 3 of them on the road, all in difficult place to play.
Moving away from the volleyball and I still cant get my head around Liverpool paying £35 million for Andy Carroll. There is no way in hell he is worth more than David Villa who is arguably the best striker in the world at the moment. There is also no way is worth more than Nedved, Vieri (in his prime) and Buffon who are some of the best players of the generation. My only guess is that who ever made the call to bid for him put the decimal point in the wrong place and actually wanted to bid £3.5 million, either that or Liverpool thought it was a game of Football Manager and accidentally clicked 'make offer' after they got Newcastles response to their enquiry. Another thing, the audacity of Newcastle to knock back the 1st offer was something and to raise the price, but for Liverpool to agree to the raise was something of pure stupidity.
Those calling for Delneri to go after the Udinese game, move a long, give the man some time to build his squad and his system. Think Sir Alex and Wenger (to a certain degree) are good examples of what happens when you give a manager more then 6 months to put together a half decent team.
Think thats about it, cant remember any one doing anything that stupid this month, havent seen the girls so cant say anything about them, Joe has behaved, Lennie will get the car stuck in snow every 5 minutes, Sebbe needs a phone stapled to his face so he doesnt lose another one.
great tackle
average ;)
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