The team travelled from London to Madrid on Wednesday 21st November in the morning using Easyjet and then after 10 hours in Madrid we travelled via Iberia to Santiago do Chile. The reason for this was due to save to the players £150 each.
We arrived Santiago 08:40 hours on Thursday morning and the team rested until the evening.
On Thursday evening we had a warm up game versus a Chilean Senior Team to ensure the boys acclimatised to the hours and temperature, we drew the game 6-6.
Next day, we played USA as part of our preparation and the result was 10-1 to us. We showed a lot more strength than one our rivals.
Due to lack of organization we have to cancel our evening friendly game as the adaptation to the rink was changed few times during the day and we only found out when we got the sports centre.
Saturday 23rd November we played the open game versus Chile after delayed Open Ceremony which did not help our players as our game started straight away.
The result was 8-0 to Chile one the favourites to win this competition (half time 3-0).
With a crowd in excess of 2,000 supports complete with drums our team started the game very nervous which caused lack of concentration in defence which cost us the 3 goals in first half.
We showed spells of good man to man restricted and counter attack moves, however our mistakes cost us the goals.
Although we still showed spells of good team play defence and attack our mistakes still cost further goals in the second half.
The result appeared bad but after the first round games results it is not too bad considering we played one the best teams.
The morale of the team is now up for the game today against Portugal, another favourite to win the competition.
Carlos Amaral & Darrel Pearce
