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PRIDE OF THE NATION? |
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Expectations are always so high at this time of year. Everyone so much looks forward to these midsummer long evenings on pristine green grass. Get out of work a bit early. A couple of beers with your mates. Pull on a white shirt and get ready for some serious, meaningful sport. |
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And you know what, this is a team we can really get behind. It’s got some genuinely good players in it and they seem to enjoy each other’s company. The manager is a good bloke. Speaks well. He knows what it’s like to fail with this team so doesn’t put too much pressure on his players. Yeah he could be a bit more flexible in his selections and a bit more ruthless in his in-game decision making, but compared to the succession of duffers who’ve done it before..... |
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And yeah the captain can be a bit frustrating, quite slow to move and so on. But you can’t deny his scoring record with this side, and his teammates seem to like him. |
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Yet the results, it has to be said that they’ve been disappointing, even if we didn’t know much about most of our unfamiliar opponents, who didn’t contain many of the names we’re used to facing, coming from all sorts of different clubs. We’re just not scoring enough. And maybe you’d be ok with that if we were playing in a slightly more attractive style. But you can’t say it’s easy to watch. |
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And this is when it really matters, on the biggest stage against our biggest rivals. We’re not playing friendlies any more boys, there’s an actual trophy on the line. One we could win if we perform at our best. And it’s win or bust now, no margin for error from here to the end of this tournament. |
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But while we’re just about still in it, we just didn’t fire enough shots last Tuesday night. And that’s got to improve from hereon. We had opportunities to impose ourselves on the game - at one point early on it even looked like we might be ahead - but our opponents looked pretty comfortable at most stages of the contest and went home very satisfied with the result.
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And after we lost to the Dodgers at cricket, going 1-0 down in the Ken Block Trophy series, we all went to the bar to watch England-Slovenia in the Euros. And that wasn’t much better either. |
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