Euro Games Day 5

After a 2 day break visiting the fashion houses in Milan, England is back in the hockey business.

We have given up understanding how the programme works but we play Germany at 3pm. A quick pizza round the corner and the bus is here on time at 1pm sharp for the trip across Monza to the PalaCandy.

Against Germany we need a good team job and we get it. The man to man defence has to be consistent and ready for block after block. After 13 minutes, James scores and we go in (actually outside to get some fresh but very hot air) at half time 1 – 0 up.

The second half follows in the same pattern and Brendan makes it 2 – 0 up with a phenomenal shot with 6 minutes left on the clock. Our defence was keeping intact but a reckless advance with 35 seconds left let the Germans counter-attack and make it 2 – 1. The match ended with Brendan choosing to hold rather than shoot in front of the German goal.

Although this was a game that we intended to keep tight, both teams had quite a few chances with the best probably falling to England. The Germans are very physical in their blocking and perhaps it looks more obvious when we fight fire with fire. As the match played out both James and Karl had served time for accumulated blue cards and we were at risk of losing them for our remaining matches.

As everyone knows, several of our experienced players are missing for this competition but our new players showed that they can keep their concentration and follow the match plan. This gives us more options for future events.

Tonight we saw the Italian master-plan come unstuck when they lost to Switzerland on penalties. We saw this on television as we need to be early to bed ready for the bus at 7am and Andorra at 9am tomorrow morning. It will be a very long day with Austria in the afternoon, the closing ceremony scheduled for 23:30 and hotel check-out at 3:30am Sunday!

Ron Barker