Men’s Commonwealth Blog: Day 3
October 1, 2010
We kicked off today with a jog and stretch around the inside perimeter of the Athlete’s Village, as we had an exhibition game against Malaysia later in the day and needed to get the legs firing. After a quick shower to freshen up it was off the dining hall. The meal of choice for the day was cereal and toast mostly b/c the line up for eggs, bacon, beans, and hashbrowns was about 10 minutes long. After steering clear of the Mango Cornflakes, I went with the regular Cornflakes mixed with chocolate Milo flakes.
After Breakfast we had a big chunk of time off before our next scheduled event, which was lunch. To pass the time a few of us went down to lounge in our tower and watched some Ryder Cup coverage. This was short lived however because of the awful weather in Wales that lead to a rain delay of the tournament. We quickly switched over to an EPL match between Fulham and Everton but that was fairly boring so we decided to head up to our rooms before leaving for lunch.
Lunch was quite tasty. I decided to go with the African section and had some jolof rice, black eyed peas, and some nicely marinated chicken. Of course I washed this down with my standard mango juice box. After lunch we had a bit of down time before our pregame meeting. After the meeting it was off to the team Canada flag raising ceremony. We marched as a team over to the International Zone where there is an Amphitheatre set up. We were lead by Canoose the Goose, the Canadian team mascot. Upon arrival we were gifted with Indian scarves on our way to our seats. The festivities got under way with the Mayor of the Athlete’s Village giving a speech, followed by the Team Canada Chef de Mission. They then raised our flag as we all sang the national anthem. This was followed by our fearless flagbearer and team captain Ken Pereira receiving the flag he will be carrying in the Opening ceremonies from Alexandra Orlando who was the flag bearer in the closing ceremonies of the Melbourne Commonwealth Games of 2006.
Then it was off to the pitch and down to business. We played two halves against Malaysia on the Stadium pitch, one 25 min. half and one 20 min. half. We started off fairly well and had most of the play. After earning a couple of penalty corners, Scott Tupper slotted one between the goalies legs to go up 1-0. We then had a few very good scoring opportunities which we could not put behind the keeper in the goal. The play then went back and forth a bit before we cashed in on one of our opportunities as Philip Wright received the ball in front of the goalie and quickly got it up and over him into the top of the goal. We let them get back into the game early in the second half when they scored on a quick counter attack to cut the lead in half. We held it together for the rest of the half until the final minutes when they were given a suspect penalty corner that they converted low stick side. All in all it was not a bad game for us but a very frustrating result that we should have never let get away. We will learn from our mistakes though and be ready for our opening match against South Africa on Tuesday.
Our post match routine of cooling down and ice bathing was quickly executed before we were off to the Village again for some dinner. As most of us are now adjusted to the jet lag, we will all be hanging out for a couple of hours before we head to bed and prepare for the day to come.
Dave Jameson
