It has been a while.
I don't even really know why. For a few months after my last post, I kept meaning to get around to a new one, then it started to feel like it had been too long since the last one and people had probably lost interest in my get-a-load-of-me style ramblings.
None of that explains why I've randomly started again 20 months after my last post. It's basically because I quite enjoy writing my get-a-load-of-me style ramblings, and because I've just been to a tournament in Cluses, France with the GB juniors and have something new to ramble about.
Basically, the GB senior team got invited to a friendly tournament against France, Turkey and the Netherlands but they were too in America to go, so GB decided to send our 10 of our juniors (meaning that this is the second time I've been selected for the juniors since turning too old for the junior program, while only being selected once in my entire 19 years of eligibility). That would have been tough enough, and it suddenly turned into 9 of our juniors when one of the guys realised a couple of days before the tournament that they had no idea where their passport was.
Odds stacked against us, and off to a flying start...
So after a 3:30am start from Sheffield, day 1 of the trip was just driving to Heathrow, flying to Geneva, driving over the French border to Cluses and sleeping through all manner of alarms until breakfast the next morning.
Croissants, team training and rest, then the real fun began. I'm not going to break each of our games individually because that would probably be a lot of reading that wouldn't be all that interesting unless your as analytical/sad as me.
To sum it up, we had some pretty serious competition, a couple of the top teams in the world each missing one player, and a French squad at full strength. We weren't expected to win anything, or even come close. Looking back at it now, we shouldn't have had a prayer really, but through the five games in the tournament we only got beaten badly once, and then another game that was close for the first half before the Netherlands got away from us. The other 3 games were each decided by 10 points or less, which is a hell of an accomplishment when you think about it.
We stayed in those games through some monster performances from some of our guys. George dropping 36 on France, Gregg being completely undefendable in Game 1 against Turkey, and Charlie going beast-mode on them second time round for 21 points on 75% shooting and probably 14 or 15 rebounds.
The numbers were impressive, but it was the team spirit and complete commitment to blind optimism going into every game that really stood out to me. Not many teams in the world where you'll find that, especially in the tough situation we were in.
Everyone played their role, stuck together, picked each other up when we were struggling and stubbornly refused to admit that we had absolutely no business shoving it up any of these teams the way we were doing. The more experienced guys helped the newer guys out, while the two guys who had never been selected for GB before came out and played with no fear after being thrown in about the deepest end that wheelchair basketball offers.
All of this was pretty impressive stuff, gets even more ridiculous when you consider that we were playing in a 37-degree greenhouse of a sportshall with no air-conditioning, and a country in general that didn't offer many breaks from suffocating heat. This kind of weather led to some horribly stereotypical Brits-on-tour moments...
So yeah, it was moments like this, a couple of the new guys getting pretty sharp haircuts from the Dutch Men as part of the first-time ritual, and a few of us pushing through a pretty dangerous thunderstorm in the pouring rain to get a takeaway pizza that made it as much fun as it was. My inner sociopathic competitor is still wounded from taking 5 losses, but I've taken a lot from the tournament and am really proud of the performance we put on, no shame in losing to some of the teams we lost to.
To sum it up, we had some pretty serious competition, a couple of the top teams in the world each missing one player, and a French squad at full strength. We weren't expected to win anything, or even come close. Looking back at it now, we shouldn't have had a prayer really, but through the five games in the tournament we only got beaten badly once, and then another game that was close for the first half before the Netherlands got away from us. The other 3 games were each decided by 10 points or less, which is a hell of an accomplishment when you think about it.
We stayed in those games through some monster performances from some of our guys. George dropping 36 on France, Gregg being completely undefendable in Game 1 against Turkey, and Charlie going beast-mode on them second time round for 21 points on 75% shooting and probably 14 or 15 rebounds.
The numbers were impressive, but it was the team spirit and complete commitment to blind optimism going into every game that really stood out to me. Not many teams in the world where you'll find that, especially in the tough situation we were in.
Everyone played their role, stuck together, picked each other up when we were struggling and stubbornly refused to admit that we had absolutely no business shoving it up any of these teams the way we were doing. The more experienced guys helped the newer guys out, while the two guys who had never been selected for GB before came out and played with no fear after being thrown in about the deepest end that wheelchair basketball offers.
All of this was pretty impressive stuff, gets even more ridiculous when you consider that we were playing in a 37-degree greenhouse of a sportshall with no air-conditioning, and a country in general that didn't offer many breaks from suffocating heat. This kind of weather led to some horribly stereotypical Brits-on-tour moments...
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| To the delightful mountain village of Cluses, we are sorry. Sincerely, Great Britain Juniors. |
Not sure what's next for me GB-wise, if nothing else then it'll just be a summer of training hard ready for next season. If you're lucky, you guys might even get a blog post on that riveting stuff.
Going to try and get back into blogging regularly, in case anyone on Earth has actually missed this, until next time I have something (I find) interesting to ramble about, I'll leave you with the links to watch our games from Cluses!
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| Squad |
Mark
Yay!
ReplyDeleteSounds like you had fun! As an old friend of mine said to me once 'Aim for Gold, but if you only reach silver or bronze, it doesn't matter. Heck, it doesn't even matter if you can't get bronze as long as you give it a hell of a shot'. I've never heard such true words, from such an inspirational guy.
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