A satisfactory day at the office

Day 3 brought an early start with our first 9am game out at satellite fields "Jericho". Our physio Annette was up strapping at 6am, we all received varying amounts of sleep depending on whether we were being serenaded by Dingos, having hall way guts played outside our rooms by the masters or sleeping next to the smoke alarm which went off incessantly at 4:30am.

Despite the disrupted sleep we were at the fields with plenty of time to spare with lovely views of the mountains to inspire us. First up the big trans-Tasman clash. We traded to 3-3 before a few breaks from strong defense, including a layout D by Lisa McGinnigle, to take a comfortable half time lead 9-5. The second half we continued well getting to 16-10 (?), including another layout D by Lisa. The Kiwis pulled out a zone after that which we had been working well against, but closed it up and got us stuck in our endzone and soon it was 16-11. Hard pressure from the Kiwis, and less than optimal choices by us, had the Kiwis on a run getting to 16-13 before we finally punched in the last goal. A win but not quite as satisfying as we would like. The game also saw the return of Vivian and Gamble following days off with the flu, they both performed strongly.

We had a long break as our second game was in the 4:30pm time slot. We were fired up to take on the Finns (finalists at Worlds in 2004 and #2 seed). We came out with strong man defense and took a 4-0 lead before the Finns called a time-out. They scored the next point but we continued to force the errors and took half 9-2. The second half contained more strong defence before Tania went down heavily (later diagnosed as a torn ACL). The team was shaken but continued to execute smoothly to finish the game 17-5. Vivian was again a stand out with several perfect hucks and strong defense deep.

Tomorrow we finish pool play with a 10:30 game against the Mexicans. This is followed by a cross-over game (probably against Canada) in the afternoon to determine our position going into the quarter-finals.

The other Aussie teams also had a strong results today, 11 wins and 1 loss across the 6 teams. Tomorrow brings some much tougher match ups in the other divisions.