The success of tour blog writing hinges on two separate factors. The first is if the writer is a talented wordsmith and the second if the day held an event of particular significance. If any of you have read anything my brother has written you will be well aware that the Guest children are not wordsmiths.
After Taylor’s post about our game against New Zealand this leaves me with July 25th 2014, a day that will go down in the annals of history as a rest day for the MNT.
With this in mind I may as well stop right here and spare you all reading my poor attempt at recalling the events of our day off. Instead I have decided to skip to July 26th aka the day of The Beav.
July 26th was special for our group, we had the pleasure to be a part of significant day in MNT history. It was the day that Big D Big J received his 200th cap for Canada.
DJ is a man of few words and he continued this trend when he spoke to the group before the day’s match against Malaysia.
He spoke of how much representing Canada has meant to him over the past 12 years. This is something that rings true with our whole group and DJ is the perfect example of a guy who plays/trains with this pride every minute he is on the pitch.
Aside from it being a milestone match the game against Malaysia was a big part of our quest to play in a Commonwealth Game’s semi final.
I wish could report on a victorious day with lots of positives from the game. Unfortunately the tone of this blog takes a negative turn from here.
We went into the match with well-deserved optimism but we were unable to turn this into good hockey.
We held the ball for significant periods and were ahead on all significant statistics except the one that matters most the scoreboard. We were unable to take advantage of our opportunities and went down 2-0.
It was one of the most disappointing losses I have been a part of in quite some time. Not just because of the significance of DJ’s 200th cap but more that we didn’t play to a standard that we have shown we are capable of.
After a bit of soul searching in the change rooms after the game we returned to the village. Instead of wallowing in self-pity we have set our sights on improving in our next fixture against Trinidad and Tobago.
Final congratulations to DJ on his milestone game and I am sure the result will be better in your 300th!
Thanks for reading,
Guesty
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