I had my real first game back this weekend. In a whole, I sucked. Well, maybe not sucked but I was pretty damn average. We played Wainuiomata at their place, which is over a big hill and some distance away. pretty much in Gang land. Anyway, we were playing for this guy named Fuke. He died this week with a heart attack we believe and he played for our team last year. It's a little weird b/c I saw him just last week b/c he was a courier with the post office and would drop packages off at my work. Never knew his name but I know a face. It's hard to learn all the island boys names ya know. But yeah,he was only like 28. So strange.
I played about 50 minutes of the game and started the match. I dropped the first kick that came to me but after that didn't miss any. Must be first game jitters. The sun was in my eyes so I couldn't see a thing! I think I was lucky to even catch the ball! As a team we played terribly. So many missed opportunities. Seemed like everyone was playing with tunnel vision. I can count the times on two hands where I caught the ball from a kick in the back and passed it out for a counter attack where there was an overland and the guy just took it right into contact. VERY frustrating. So we were losing 13-0 with about 10 minutes left in the game when my coach made some drastic changes around the field. It deffinately paid divendends right away. We scored 3 tries in that 10 minutes to win the game. They got tired and we got a spark from somewhere. Unbelieveable. My first half WAS pretty average but the good news is my leg was fine and it's not even sore today. I can say my match fitness is pretty bad but I'm looking up about it b/c for me to last a good half and more without playing my fitness is pretty good. I've been running about 6-7 kilometers 4-5 days a week as well as the bike so I guess it's paying off.
We're still in the running for the top. Our team hasn't done as well in the 2nd half of the season as the first but we're still in there.
So it's still winter here. That brings southerlies from Antartica and that means cold rain. Yeah, no good. I'm dealing with it a whole lot better than last year. Don't know if it's the flu jab that's helping me or what but It's great. I'm in super save mode now. I'm only planning on staying in New Zealand until January then I'll be moving out of the country. not back to America but to Scotland. At least, that's the plan. haven't bought my ticket yet. I figured it's easy to live in another country until the age of 28-30, then it gets harder to get in and live there. i don't want to live in England. Never was impressed by England. And I hear Ireland's economy isn't so good. And I want to live in country that speaks english, even though Scottish may not SOUND like english it still is english. The only thing I want to do is work my ass off and take weekend trips around europe. Imagine weekend trips to Greece, Ibitha, Spain, denmakr, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, anywhere! The flights get down to 1 euro sometimes. So I figured now is the time to do this. I'll give NZ a big push in December to see it all then head off to Europe. Can't wait!
