Day 59

I'll start with last night. No call from Theo just a text saying no tickets to the game, disappointing but we weren't too bothered, like I said it would have been nice but doesn't make or break our trip. Harry then went up to bed while I sat downstairs messaging Tina and some friends from back home. As I had a late start today and because of the time difference back home I headed up to bed about 2. Harry had locked the door from the inside with our only key. Great. I went to security to ask for our spare, we had been offered 2 keys but we turned 1 down just incase we lost 1, left it somewhere or someone had been locked in or out, and it meant we could quickly go to security and get it. makes sense. However she had no idea where the spare was. I spent the next half hour banging on the door and wall, texting Harry and security was phoning the room phone. He was sound asleep. I had 2 options either go wake up 1 of the residents at 3 in the morning or sleep on a very uncomfortable sofa. Sofa it was, I set an alarm for 6 as I didn't really want to be still asleep when all the staff came in and walked past and thought that Harry might be more awake as we are usually up at 7 so hopefully he's in a routine of waking up then. I came up at 6 and the door was unlocked, time to get some sleep. 

Advice to anyone coming here next year, take the spare key, the sofa is not comfortable. Last year Jeff locked Luke in the room this year Harry locked me out so it must be something about this place.

My bed for last night.

After finally getting some sleep it was time to get up. Harry had planned to make an old family dish for lunch, it sounds awful but apparently it's amazing, I'm willing to give it a go. Unfortunately the electric in the area was off so no food. 

With a really bad day/night already I was ready to call it a day. We then had a phone call from Joe, his transport for the day had let him down and Densel was at a funeral. We headed to Ruyterwacht with 45 minutes till kick off. We were going to be late but Joe had phoned ahead to let them know. We arrived at Joe's and the junior team started getting into the car. They told Joe they were senior players but they were all 14 years old. Me and Harry looked at each other, an easy game today just got made more difficult. The car journey to the Italian club didn't help boost our confidence either, all 3 boys saying they weren't really fancying playing against men and they were a bit scared, great.

We arrived 10 minutes and the team we were playing were already half way through a friendly. They are the B team and aren't that great. Hopefully they would be tired, finally a bit of luck. Final whistle went and the Woodstock coach came up to me, apparently he thought we weren't coming so our league game would now be against a mix of their better A team players and the B team players that were still fit to play. Luck definitely not with me today.

The game started. Me and Harry the only seniors alongside Eric who was a junior but played with the seniors, and then 4 juniors. We started really well and found ourselves 1-nil up early on. Route 1 football, Harry played a long ball from near enough our goal line, I knocked it down into the path of Cecil who was left with an easy finish. They equalised straight away, they ran straight past Eric and Cecil and finished past our keeper. The half went on and as the younger players carried on you could see they were nervous and weren't up for it. Leaving me and Harry to work extra hard. 6-1 down at half time, probably a fair score line. 2nd half went much the same way, I'm not going to pick anyone out specifically as nobody had a great game, but the keeper shouldn't have been playing, and with a few older players we would have stood a much better chance. I think the final score was something like 13-3. Very disappointed with that game, but more disappointed that 1 of the other coaches picked out my fitness as an issue. I ran box to box for over 3 quarters of the game, I may have looked frustrated but felt fine. Didn't have a great game but felt that was unfair criticism, pick up on a mistake I made but I think that out of the 8 guys that played I covered more distance than most.

Our boys then went on to play a junior game and if I'm honest were outplayed from the off. The other team were doing all sorts of tricks and kick ups in the second half. They lost 10-3. Just shows that they weren't ready for the senior game in my opinion.

We came back and watched Arsenal hold on to a 2-1 win. Then we headed to Mixas we managed to get them to turn the England rugby game on to watch England win by 20 points against the French. Usually a great result but today we needed to win by 26 points to win the Six Nations, oh well great result none the less and on we go to the World Cup. 

Harry is off to go shark cage diving tomorrow, hopefully he doesn't lock me in or out and I'll be able to chill out around Berghof or head out to watch the football.