Men’s Commonwealth Blog: Day 1
September 29, 2010
The Commonwealth Games experiences for Canada have been very positive and with our final arrival of Mathew Guest early Wednesday morning our Canadian team is now complete. We had our first training session Tuesday afternoon and every player was itching to start preparing in New Delhi. Our confidence is high and Canada looked better then expected and we will only get better throughout this competition.
With an early rise Wednesday morning the team met for a light jog and stretch in preparation for Canada’s first exhibition game against Scotland. Following the teams morning exercise they focused their next mission to cafeteria where the food ranges in many different varieties. So far India has done a terrific job accommodating all the athletes at the Games and no one has expressed negativity towards the food. The Commonwealth Games workers and volunteers have greeted us with open arms and have truly made us feel like we’re at home.
The temperature in India as everyone knows is hot but for many of us it feels like we’re a strip of bacon in a frying pan. The good thing about this is that Scotland is feeling the same way. The whistle blows to start the first third of the game and Canada immediately takes control where several chances are created but no glory finishes. It took until the 13th minute to finally capitalize when Jesse Watson smashed the ball inside the D despite the goalies best attempt to saveit the ball powering through his blocker into the goal.
Scotland raised their game in the second third but Canada adapted accordingly and still created opportunities. Dave Carter and Anthony Kindler made several excellent saves when pressure was applied by Scotland and handled their rebounds gracefully towards the sidelines or fellow teammates. Canada managed a few short corners in the first and second thirds and off a particular corner a rebound taken by vice captain of Canada Scott Tupper was collected by Gabbar Singh who buried the ball in the top left corner to make the score 2-0 Canada. In the last ten minutes of the game Keegan Pereira carried the ball to the left side of the D, very close to the baseline and had beautiful reverse stick shot beating Scotland’s goaltender between his legs. Canada finished the game with a 3-0 victory over Scotland and with their next match against Malaysia on October 1st Canada will prepare to keep their seven game winning streak alive.
Team Canada (Men)
