Good things come to those who wait.

What a load of bollocks that statement is. I am still in Sweden. I am still waiting on some swedish goblin to send me my cheques. It as been more than 2 months since i sent all the paperwork off, they said the money would come in 2 weeks. Well it has been a bloody long 2 weeks, everytime I talk to them they say it is in the post, well they are taking the phrase 'snail mail' to the extreme. I know most of my blog has a lot of 'anti-swedish' things in it, but 95% of it is tounge in cheek, and hopefully people understand that. But the swedes dont help themselves in giving me ammo, to slag them off, when there system does this to me. Anyway not a lot has happened, since my last post, just had lots of time on my hands and nothing much to do apart from wanting to go home. The whole world came to a stand still as a country that not a lot happens in, decided to have a volcanic eruption and cause havoc to pretty much everyone in northern europe, lucky for me I still dont have a plane ticket home, so it didnt effect me.

Over the past month has been the finals of the championship, so we have been supporting our sister club Engleholm, who were favourites to win, however they lost 3-2 in games and had to settle for silver after going 17-1 in the regular season. Now people may say that i am biased in the fact that I have many good friends on the engelholm team and of course i wanted to them to win, yet I have to go back to my comments from my previous post about sporting officials. The scene was perfectly set, the 2 best teams in sweden, and it comes down to effectively a one of game, winner takes all (insert more cliches if you want) game for the gold medal, the scene was set, the swedish volleyball federations were licking the lips, it couldnt have been scripted better. And then along came the refs to ruin it. I talked about refs not being strong in the games that matter, and it happened again in the biggest game of the season, with the whole of Swedish volleyball watching. The say that a ref has had a good game if they are never mentioned, yet after the game all the talk was about how poor the officials were (and not just from me) I mean whats the point in having line judges if you always over rule them. A big thing is the first few calls the ref makes, as it is supposed to set the standard for the rest of the game, yet they didnt do this, and made poor decisions at crucial times, and unfortunately it was always against Engelholm. I am not taking anything away from Katrinholm, they were the best opponent i have seen EVS play against all season, and stepped there game up from when i saw them at Grand Prix, when they got picked apart in the final. Although the setter is still bad, how she got MVP i will never know, it should of been the libero hands down. In my eyes EVS is still the best team, they were the most consistent team over the regular season losing only one game, but thats the upside/downside to a play off format not always the 'best' wins.

And with that, the seasons are over. I have said goodbye to some people that have become good friends to me, and hopefully i will be seeing them sooner rather than later, but who knows what the future will bring for me and for them. Either way they have made my experience here a great one and I thank them for that, I hope i returned the favour to them.

Ok enough of the soppy stuff, havent really got much else to say, The cherries are going up, Jaro Halak is my hero, Stevie G obviously wants to play for chelsea, Berbatov and Zlatan are the same person and couldnt score in a brothel. Some videos that have kept me amused over the past few weeks, enjoy

If's, But's and stage fright

So it seems like ages since I last updated this. To be honest a lot has happened in the past 3 weeks or so.

The biggest thing was that we lost 3-2 in games in the semi finals, which felt heart breaking, after losing the first game away 3-0, we come home and won 3-0, it was possibly our best performance of the season, we served them off the court, we then traveled away and lost 3-2 in a tight game that could of gone either way, unfortunately it didnt go for us. So it was back home for game 4 and a must win game, we managed to pull out a 3-1 win after losing the first, then winning a tight 2nd set. So then it was to game 5 on april fools day, winner goes to the final. So it was time to get out the gret quotes an listen to motivational speeches. The first set we played like rabbits caught in headlights, there was no pressure on us, we were the lowest ranked seed left playing the top ranked seed, yet it felt like everything as on us. The second set was tight until a few mental errors at the end of the set cost us, so then to the 3rd set that was a must win, to cut the story short we were 24-17 down and fought back to even have set point at 26-25, but there was to be no fairytail ending as we lost 28-26 and with that the season was over. It was one of the most gutting feelings I have ever had playing sport, that the work for the past 7 months that we had put in had come to an end as the ball hit our defender and sailed in to the stands, then to look over and see the celebrations of linkoping and there fans. Its a feeling i hope i dont have to experience again anytime soon. After the pain come the "If's" and "buts", what if this had been different, what if this had happened etc. Looking back on the season it has been a good season for us, we have battled through a whole lot of issues, especially at the start of the season, being constantly over looked by the media in favour of the Engelholm girls, and some toss ice hockey team from engleholm that has just got relegated, yet they get more pages in the newspaper than a Wags night out and only slightly less pages than Zlatan breaking a nail. However, the way the season ended still hurts, the ideal of course would have been to win the gold, but the manner in which we played game 5 sort of tarnished the past 7 months of hard work, i think the pain would be less if we had gone out and laid it all out so there wouldn't have been the if's and buts. Yet it seemed something was missing on that thursday evening in Linkoping.

So now it means no more volleyball for a few months, and the chance to chill and relax for my last few weeks in sweden, party a bit, and go and support the lovely ladies in Engelholm as they are in the final. I enjoyed a good two days of partying this weekend for my birthday, I have been extremely lucky in the friends I have made in the short period of time that I have been here, so it made me happy that a lot of them came over to help celebrate my birthday, even if my Birthday twin and the rest of the Engelholm girls could only stay on the soft stuff as they had a game the day after. Playing 'arrogance' with swedish people is fun, they seem to enjoy the game, yet are grossed out by it at the same time.

This summer is yet a mystery for me and where i will be and what i will be doing, although watching the world cup will be top of the list. I will however miss the people that I have become friends with in sweden and the people that have made me feel welcome since day 1. I may never see them again, as they may move on or I may move on, but they have still made my stay here amazing.

One thing that has bugged me over the past few weeks is sporting officials mainly in football and volleyball, am not using this as an excuse as to why we lost, but when it comes to play offs you expect strong, down the middle officiating, yet it didnt come, in both series against Linkoping and Hylte, for all teams involved there were terrible calls, these people have players, teams and coaches fates and futures in their hands and they dick about like it doesnt matter and it pissed me off even more when you ask the ref after the game about his calls and he just smiles and winks at you, Knobhead. In football united where piss poor in the first half against chelsea, and deserve to be 1-0 at half time, Drogba's goal was a world class finish that all you could do was applaud, however he was 3 yards offside, stood infront of the linesman, how did he not flag, his job is to put his flag up and he couldnt manage that, in possibly the game that has decided the title race. I dont understand how fifa keeps putting off the development of technology in football, but how can they ignore it when so called officials are making more and more mistakes in big games. So in the past few weeks, my season has come crashing down, and so has Uniteds, all i need now is England to lose the world cup on penalty's to Portugal and that will be the hat-trick.

I think karma has caught up with me, and my laughing at children, yesterday at school, the first day out in the sun with the kids, i was chasing after a tennis ball, slipped and sprained my ankle, this was after a kid, twice in a row went to catch a ball missed it and hit him in the face. Obviously I laughed, maybe I used up all my 'laughing at children' points and it was there turn to get back at me. Oh well could be worse, could be in the finals and have to sit out....

Bits and Bobs

So after the drama of the quarter final series against Hylte, the start of the semi finals was a bit of a let down on our part. We traveled up the day before, then practiced the morning of the game to get used to the hall, Linkoping has the biggest hall in the league, where as we have the smallest, also they play with the old Mikasa balls, where as mostly everyone else around the league uses the new ones. After all this we where sent packing from the big gym on the back of a 3-0 lose. All the hype and excitement in the build up turned into a damb squip as we were served off court by two Australians named Aiden and Hamish. Saturday wasnt a great day in my sporting world as all results didnt go in my favour, however sunday did. The little dog eating korean, Ji sung park popped up and scored the winner against the scousers to make my sunday a happy one, made even happier when el hadji diouf, decided for once in his life not to punch or a spit on people, and scored against chelsea. He is not a 100% retard after all.

This will turn into randomness now as i have different things to ramble about.

Fernando Torres, good striker, looks gash in a liverpool shirt though, as a good as he his, he turned into a whining little bitch on sunday, and kicking the penalty spot just made him look like a spoilt little tit.

Swedish press on volleyball, before i continue i would like to point out to any people that play for Engelholm women's team this is not slagging you off!!! The press around here love them, maybe love them more than there own children/families. Dont get me wrong the girls deserve there praise, winning grand prix, Nevza, and winning the league season with 17 wins and only one lose. But the press seem to cream over anything and everything they do, they won the gold last year, so where once again favourites this time around, however we have been slagged off by the press since day 1 of the season starting and the bias is starting to grate a bit. The girls setter, won player of the season and setter of the season and rightly so, she is unreal and head and shoulders above anyone else, our setter also won setter of the year for the men, yet in the press article got one line compared to mucks two paragraphs. The mens league is far closer than the women's league, the difference between top and bottom in the mens was 25 points, in the women's it was 43, and the top 4 in the mens were separated by 8 points, in the womens 19. Yet it feels like when ever we do well the press count it as lucky, we where written off for grand prix yet took the silver, we were written off against Hylte in the play offs yet won 3-1 in games, and yet again we have been written off against Linkoping, with out the consideration that we had the best results against them in the regular season. I have full respect for the girls in engelholm they train there arse's off and our deserving of the medals they have won this year. The journalist that slagged us off before xmas, a few weeks ago decided, that instead of coming to our game against the defending champions, and the 1st game in there new hall, he would go to engelholm and watch them play bottom of the league. We ended up losing 3-2, 16-14 in the final set in front of a Swedish record 1531 people, the engelholm game was canceled because of the weather. Yet he still couldn't be bothered to cover the game. You can be lucky in some games, but when we keep being 'lucky' it annoys me that they dont realise that we may actually have the talent and can achieve results like the girls down the road.

The retards i spoke of last week still haven't figured out how to write numbers on a piece of paper and send it in the mail.

Yesterday at school, kid jumps up in the air, other kids throws a ball in his face, kid is off balance and lands on his face, starts to cry, the kid was fine, was it cruel that I laughed slightly?



Now that is commitment and a desire to help your team win



I just like this

A week is a long time in sport

Well the saying is normally 'A week is a long time in football' referring to how much can change in a short period of time. Last Wednesday we left Hylte after losing 3-0, and the series being tied at 1-1. We hadnt played great, but by know means our worst performance of the season. I still believed that if we had won the 3rd set(we lost 30-28) we would have gone on to win the game, but it wasnt to be. So after Wednesday we began planning for Sunday, so with plan A not working in Hylte, despite working in the first game, we began hearing of plan B, C, D and E. However they where thrown out of the window during friday practice when one of our guys rolled an ankle, so it was back to Plan A, with a few tweaks. So sunday came around after the drama's of the previous days, the buzz that i though was missing from wednesday was back, there was no forced happiness and joy it was all back to normal just like the previous sunday. We won the game 3-1, it was a similar pattern to the previous sunday, a close 1st set , that we gained control in and coasted at the end to seal it, a tight 2nd set, won 25-23, a tight 3rd set lost 24-26, then a 4th set we never looked like losing 25-20. However there where 2 differences to the previous week, at the start of the 4th set, Hylte went 1-0 up, however one of their american players on court, but no where near the play suddenly fell to the floor and could not continue with a suspected torn achillies tendon. The second massive difference, was Lennie Hansson, in the 2nd set we were 21-23, coach decided to put lennie on to serve and well, the boy delivered!! 4 aces in a row!!



I don't think I have ever seen anything like it live.
Although we lost the set after, I think Hylte where still in shock, the crowd really got behind us, and every time he came on to serve Hylte looked like they were shi**ing it. The ironic thing is that lennie would most likely have not been playing had our guy not get injured on friday, but to be fair to the lad, he took his chance when it was given to him.

So that took us to last night and game 4 in Hylte, we won 3-0, (25-19, 25-20, 25-19), with one of there americans injured, they had to play with a different system, and we took advantage of it. We served them off the court and made few errors. I don't think anyone could have predicted what happened in the past 6 days, twists and turns in all sense's. Some good and some bad. But that's sport, and that's why people love to watch and play, the drama, the buzz, the passion.

Now its on to saturday and away to Linkoping, who won the regular season, but we had the best results against them out of any team in the division, also hopefully no more broken bones.

Now on to ramblings and moaning, now I believe this is slightly retarded, and someone in the swedish world needs to have a word with themselves. I am meant to get money for working in the schools during the work, but the money comes from the government. So to get it you have to fill out a form at the job centre, then send it half way up the country, for someone retard to check it and fill out a cheque and send it back, sounds simple, but this being sweden it is not. You send your form off, because apparently a bank transfer from one swedish account to another swedish account is far to advance for them, then wait for your cheque. I was thinking this would take a few days, how wrong i was, it has been 2 and a half weeks since my form was sent and i am still waiting. I don't know how people from england can send me stuff and it takes 2 days, yet it takes more than 2 weeks for a letter to arrive from a place 6 hours up the road in the same country. Apparently ASAP means as soon as we can be arsed.

Also, apparently when you play basketball with young kids here, they turn it to rugby, and try and beat the person with the ball up. And slightly cruel, but i found it funny, watching a kid bounce the ball off the wall and into his on face. Maybe you had to be there to fully appriciate it.

March madness

So the post season is upon us and play off time. Game 1 was Sunday just gone in Orkelljunga which we won 3-1 against Hylte, it was another great team effort similar to the linkoping game, although we sort of went one better in the fact that in the second set we were 15-8, then 16-10 down, but still managed to win the set 34-32, along with a few heart attacks along the way. Game 2 was last night in Hylte, and didn't go according to plan, we lost 3-0, it was a strange game we played well in the 1st set until about 16-16, then we seemed to deflate for no apparent reason and lost, the 2nd set was slightly closer, and then in the 3rd it was our turn to lose an epic this time 30-28. The atmosphere around the game last night was strange compared to Sunday, there didn't seem to be the same bubbliness as Sundays game and more forced joy and happiness than natural from the usual suspects. Hopefully it will return for this Sunday, when we are back at home.

So the tie is finally poised at 1-1 in the best of 5, of course we would have liked to be 2-0 up, but if someone had offered us 1-1 at this stage I think the majority of us would have taken it. All eyes are on the 'new' Hylte after their Christmas internet shopping spree, so it has taken the spotlight away from us. We are more than happy to keep a low profile and stay in the shadows, while the press write about them. The playoffs are won in mid April, not the first week of March, so we will keep plugging away step by step to be in the mix come easter time.

Away from volleyball, and my ramblings of all things swedish, just recently on swedish tv, they have started a show to find the swedish contestant for the next Eurovision song contest, it is on every friday, just after i finish practice (much to my annoyance), also from the translation it seems to be the most watched show in Sweden, which is slightly strange as all the contestants are toss. The only time i want to see a fat man in a red suit is on christmas day delivering presents, not trying to sing out of tune in swenglish. I know sweden and eurovision gave us ABBA, but i think they need to realise that it was a one off and move on.

During the weekdays, I spend time in different schools in the area helping keep the kids active during there free periods and gym classes. We normally start with a warm up game, then ask the kids want they want to play. For some reason all swedish boys want to do is fight each other, so this is classed as an 'activity' to them as proven the other week-
teacher- 'what do you want to do'
girl-'play on the rings'
boy1- 'fight'
boy2-'fight'
girl-'rings'
boy3-'fight'
boy4- 'football'

Think that's about it for now, cant seem to find any videos i like kicking around,stay safe and watch out for the tigers.

Wednesday ramblings

So then another wednesday, which means a day off from volleyball and looking after kids. Luckily and hopefully as of yesterday the worst winter in the history of the universe of sweden has stopped and the sun has come out :), which means the snow is melting. This is a good thing, however, snow melting means one thing...SLUSH. Slush to me is annoying, white snow is good and fun to play around with, no snow is good as everything is normal, however the inbetween bit is slush, and slush is piss annoying, it is dirty, grey, full of crap, and makes your feet wet when you walk through it.

Another thing that i find strange/annoying is the fact that sand sticks to things when they are wet, so who's idea was it to put sand next to the sea? and make sand stick to wet things.

One thing I find strange over here, is the fact you have to be 18 to buy alcohol in a bar, but you have to be 20 to buy alcohol from the off licence (system), I suppose this helps stopping young kids getting alcohol from the shop and the alcohol in bars is to expensive, so they won't try to buy any.

Run out of things to ramble about

The end, Part 1

So the Olympics have finished, one wish came true, in that the swedes and Lundqvist choked in the quarter finals, and couldn't get past Jaro Halak in the Slovakia goal. The only downside was that sidney crosby scored the winner in the gold medal game.

The regular season here finished this weekend to, so now we all know the draw for the play offs and the route we are to take to the gold medal finals. The regular season was close with the top 4 teams (including us) fighting for the highest seeded place possible, after 16 games the league finished like this

Linkoping 37pts (we lost 3-2 away, and won 3-1 at home, we were also the only team in the league to leave linkoping's home court with at least a point)
Falkenberg 35pts (lost 3-1 at home, lost 3-2 away and lost 3-1 in the GP final)
Sollentuna 33pts (lost 3-0 at home, won 3-2 away, won 3-1 in GP semi final
Orkelljunga 29pts
Hylte 22pts (won 3-0 at home, lost 3-0 away)
Tierp 18pts (won 3-0 at home, won 3-0 away, lost 3-2 in Swedish cup semi final)
Vingaker 16pts (won 3-1 at home, lost 3-1 away)
RiG Falkoping (lost 3-2 away, won 3-0 at home)
Habo (won 3-0 away, won 3-0 at home)

so after all that the play offs are good to go next weekend with us against Hylte, Linkoping-Vingaker, Falkenberg-RiG and Sollentuna-Tierp, each round is the best of 5 games with the higher seed playing more home games.

Hopefully my finger will be healed in time for the start of the play offs, I was mad that I missed our last game away at Vingaker, so I definitely do not want to miss any more games, especially as they are play off games.

Hopefully we will have a Sidney crosby type play offs and not a Sweden/Henrik Lundqvist type play offs.

Also curling is the most boring sport to watch, people that slag off cricket should have a word with themsleves first and watch some curling, then see if they still think cricket is boring