Can we?

There was a real buzz around the breakfast table this morning as the punters rolled in preparing for the bus trip and game in Polokwane, for the All Whites date with destiny, against Paraguay. Personally I was not that confident that we could hold Paraguay, as I think they were the best team in our group, but if we scunged an early one as against Italy, who knows.

There was a real good party atmos on the bus ride up, the chanting and the drinking going hand in hand, we got to Polokwane a good two hours early giving us a good opportunity to get in to banter with the Paraguayan fans, I took great delight in calling them Uruguayan, don’t think they got the humour…ha ha ha.

We had our best seats on of the tourney so far, sitting pitch side, great being so close but not necessarily the best viewing spot, and we were humming before the game, funnily enough I also bumped into my old flatmate Mauricio at the game too, he was traveling around the cup with a few mates, never thought I’d bump into someone in Polokwane.

I thought the game was well controlled by Paraguay and our struggle to break down their defence showed in the final 0-0 score, result that meant they topped the group and went through with Slovakia after they tipped up the Italians. A highlight for our tour party was when Jeremy Brockie got on as his old man Paul (though known on tour purely as Jeremy Brockie’s dad or JBD) is a thoroughly good bastard and it was great for him to see his boy get some game time at the World Cup.

Two weeks ago I would have been stoked with undefeated World Cup, but post match I was a bit gutted cos we got so close, but still immensely proud of our boys, they showed resilience and team unity that some of these teams full of prima donnas could learn much from. We’re going home but a champion effort from them.

The fact the All Whites looked devastated was a good sign too, as they knew they were very close to progressing, as per usual we hung around and cheered our boys on post match. However the cops had different ideas and pretty quickly moved us on, it wasn’t aggressive or anything but they were pretty insistent we had to leave.The bus ride home was celebratory and in high spirits and I think everyone on that tour realized how privileged and lucky we were to have watched this tournament live, I hit the wall before we arrived back in Jozi and tried to carry on when we got home but whilst the mind was willing the body was not.