Miss Japan and other matters

The real deal has arrived. We are two games down at the World Champs!

Yesterday we attended the opening ceremony, after which we warmed up and then later returned to the main stadium to play Japan in our opening game. We didn't get the fanfare of the Open game between Japan and New Zealand, with team captains receiving flowers from Miss Japan. The grass on the main stadium is beautifully kept, much like a bowling green. The wind which had been strong at the start of the Open game and dropped off a fair bit.

We didn't have a great first half, being 9-5 at half. We fired up after half and got a break back. The Japanese gave us plenty of opportunities with the disc but we didn't manage to convert enough. Final score 17-10 to Japan. Lauren "Mama" Brown had several layout blocks and Ash Martens also got some great layout Os and was awarded MVP by the Japanese after the game. There are some photos from our game available on Neil Gardner's great website.

Miss Japan was on the sideline the entire game, being filmed constantly. She had been kitted out in a Japanese team uniform and I think she was supposed to be providing some sort of commentary?? The press were certainly very keen to film her - I can't quite imagine Miss Australia standing on the sideline of a game in Australia. Yes another cultural difference I guess.

The officials are very officious, we are not allowed to take anything except water on to the fields (no sports drinks). The reason being that sweet drinks attract ants and ants eat the grass. We also had to walk on this weird plastic stuff on the away sideline and were not allowed on the grass next to the sideline. Additionally we were not allowed to warm down on the spare grass, though Kylie did some good work with the officials, and we did finish our warm down on the edge of the fields.

This morning we had our second game against Singapore. It is exciting to now have our Assistant Coach, Anna, here in Japan with us (she flew in last night). We ended up winning 17-5, but still plenty of things to work on. Most of us then watched the Barramundis (mixed team) take down Germany, and then the Wombats (men's masters) take the highly prized scalp of the USA.

Another curiosity of Japan is the lack of rubbish bins even though there is excessive packaging on everything. There are no rubbish bins at the fields, there are signs up telling us to take our rubbish back to our hotels. Extreme packaging abounds in the fruit and vegie section of the supermarket. Carrots are indiviually cling-wrapped and then bagged, oranges also get individually bagged.