Fourpints Den of Confusion

I’m packed.

This time tomorrow I’ll be only a couple of hours away from driving to the airport.

Then by 10am friday I’ll be back in England
By 12 noon back in bury
by 12.01 in a pub……probably

This time next week I’ll be back in the UK.  I should really start to think about packing!

Now do you think I need sunblock!

It sucks not having the Internet at home right now.  It was one of those choices I had to make. High speed Internet, or petrol to get to work.    Damn sucky job won.

Good news though.  I will be back in good old B.S.E. on the 25th of July so I look forward to running in to you all. (I could use a joke about driving on the wrong side of the road now but that would be tacky.)

I’m looking forward to real beer, seeing familiar things, and telling people who I run in to over and over that the reason they haven’t seen me in seven years is not that I don’t like them its just that I’ve been on the other side of the planet.

I’m also looking forward to not seeing adverts for the McCain / Obama election running over and over and over.  This election sucks.   People have to realise if the vote for McCain they are getting George Bush again. If the Vote for Obama they get a big change.  Will it be good change? Who can tell. But I’d rather see Obama get in just to have some change…not that I can vote here anyway.

I’m also looking forward to football being football.  And a wrench being called a spanner. 

See you soon

Wow, what a weekend!

We won Friday’s game, 2-0.

We arrived at the tournament site at 7:00 am on Saturday and I helped check in the teams that were playing early. At about 7:30 we ended up clearing the fields and sending everyone to their cars to wait because there was a storm moving through with thunder and lightening. They’ll play in rain but not with lightening. At about 8:30 the storm had moved through and the sky was sunny again. So we got everyone out of their cars and finished checking teams in. Games were delayed an hour so we played our 9:00 game at 10:00. That one was a tie, 1-1.

After that first game, we headed off to the pool party/BBQ. I am SO glad we had that opportunity! I can’t imagine sitting around at the field where the games were with nothing to do! We got to relax and the kids had fun playing in the pool and piling in the hammock. Good thing we decided to go back to the field at 3:30. By that time, the refs had pushed things along and made up some time from the morning’s storm delay so our 3:30 scheduled game started at about 3:45! We won that one, too. 2-0.

The way the determine the winner of a division is by points, 3 points for a win, 1 point for a tie, and 0 points for a loss. On that alone, we were actually tied for 1st place. But then they go by goals scored against. If that doesn’t break the tie, they go by goals scored for. And if THAT doesn’t break the tie, they hold a penalty shootout between the tied teams. FORTUNATELY we had let in 1 less goal than the team we were tied with, so we won our division! We were through to the quarter-finals!! The team that had the same wins/losses as us wasn’t so lucky though. They were tied for the wildcard spot with another team from another division. And they tied on all three rules so they had to have a shootout Sunday morning to determine who was playing who in the quarter final. Glad it wasn’t us! Talk about nerve-wracking!

Sunday morning’s quarter-final was 9:00. We won our game 1-0. We got LUCKY. The one goal that we scored was a penalty kick, and the rest of the game the girls played defense HARD to keep the other team from scoring. We went through to the semi-finals though!! That game was at 1:00. We watched the other quarter-final game at 11:00 to see who we were going to play. Both teams were good, but there was a LOT of pushing going on. The ref actually yellow carded both teams during the game. That game went into overtime (no ties allowed in the finals) and the end result was 4-2.

By the time our semi-final game started, the girls were really tired. They had already played 4 games over a day and a half. In the regular season, they play 10 games over 5-6 weeks! It didn’t help that we only had one substitute on Saturday, and none on Sunday. (Our age group plays 9 v 9 in the tournaments, and we only had 10 players sign up for it. One of the girls couldn’t make it on Sunday, and we knew that when she signed up.) We were hoping that the team we were playing was as tired as we were though, since they had just played OT and only had a half hour to rest before the game. No such luck though, they had lots of substitutes.

We ended up losing the semi-final game 7-0. The girls were crying on the sidelines after the game. The other team was playing really rough, and our girls aren’t used to that. We played the consolation game at 3:00 for a chance at 3rd place, but we lost that game, too…5-1. In the end we finished the tournament in 4th place, out of 25 teams. Not bad at all.

The teams that won 1st and 2nd were stacked, and there’s a lot of debate over whether that’s fair or not. According to the tournament rules, you have to invite all of the players on your house roster. If you don’t have enough players interested in going to the tournament (you have to have at least 6 from your house roster), you can pull players from other teams. The teams that were in 1st and 2nd only had 6 players from their house roster and the rest they pulled the best player or 2 from several different teams in their regions. A lot of the coaches and refs later told us how proud they were that we went so far with only 10 players on our tournament roster, and ALL of them being our original house team.

If I had it to do again, I would have pulled a couple more players from another team just to have some substitutes. 7 games in 2 and a half days was a lot for the girls, and I think if they were more rested they would have had a better chance of making it farther. But we’re still REALLY proud of what they accomplished considering what we were up against! 4th out of 25 isn’t all that shabby.

That was all written by the wifey up there!

Just as a note by me, the team also took first place in the spring division. Black Stallions are the Champions!!!

Now I just have to do it all again next season!!

Well Detroit has been in P-A-R-T-Y mode for a week now since the Detroit Red Wings won the Stanley Cup.  One Million plus were downtown at the parade.  Hard to imagine that many turning out for an F.A.Cup win!  In honour of the event I bought a new hat, don’t tell the Wifey it cost me $30.

Then on sunday, whilst enjoying the 90 degree weather all hell broke loose.  Black clouds rolled in and the tornado sirens in the town where blaring out. We gathered up all that was important and headed to the basement. The Wife took the dogs, I took a 24 pack.

Fingers crossed folks, I may very well be in Bury St. Edmunds at the end of July. If anyone wants to meet up for a soda or two, let me know!

Away obviously!

I’ve been taking a long needed break from the Internet. I need to take a long break from my work, but I don’t think that will be happening any time soon!

Other than working I’ve been busy coaching my soccer team. The spring season is nearly over and If my math is correct we have already won the division.  Eight wins, one loss and a game to go.  All is good!  And I’ve signed up for next season too.  There was one incident where I nearly got thrown out of the game.  The ref and I had a disagreement over the off side rule.  I was right, she was wrong. Turns out having a whistle trumps me being right!

Catch you all soon

Dave

PS. Kwame Kilpatrick is still a moron and still mayor of Detroit.

This may be a fake, but its just about right!

you can make your own pics at http://atom.smasher.org

That I was drinking too much.

My 11yr old daughter made wind chimes out of my empties.

These guys are nothing to do with me!

http://www.fourpintsproductions.com/

They are making a documentary on Fantasy Football and sadly that’s American Football and not the worlds most play game Soccer. (God I hate calling it that but if I call it Football the yanks get all confused.)

So a film about geeks pretending to manage a Rugby in padding team.

Good luck to you guys, you’ll need four pints after your done with that lot.

The Black Stallions, my under 12 girls soccer team resumed training this week. last season was awesome and I have no doubt that this coming season will be just as good.

I have however noticed one horrible fact.

I’m 38 and in terrible shape.  This week I went for a little run and strained my knee. Yesterday I kicked a ball and twisted my ankle. Right now I’m scared to go to the bathroom in case something falls off.

Man I feel old!