DAY 7, July 10th, 2011

Well, things didn’t quite go as planned tonight against the Americans. My hat goes off to the American team who displayed superior technique and speed. Although they were our opponent, as a life-long ‘football guy’, it was refreshing to see the game played how it is supposed to be played. They played much lower and naturally were much faster than we are, and they rarely missed tackles, always wrapping up.

With each turnover their goal was to score and they executed as such. They also seemed to have had more downfield blocks than line of scrimmage blocks. That all being said, only two of their 7 touchdowns were scored with their offense and in the end the stats were not near as one sided as the final score.

The day started out fine with a walk-through work out. I felt we were ready for the challenge and the boys were in good spirits. Had we not have those things go so horribly wrong in the 2nd Qtr. things would have been completely different. Now the challenge is to recover fast and get ready to take on Australia. Needless to say, this is a must win. We match up well against the Aussies. This game should be more fun than the last two, but that will only be the case if we are able to play smarter, with more sense of purpose and aggressiveness. In addition, we will also need to take advantage of all opportunities presented to us.

The early indications are that if we beat Australia we are looking to play Austria on the final day for 5th place. That would be a nice finish to the tournament playing in front of a packed house in Wien. But before that happens there is plenty of work to be done, bodies to be healed and improvement to be accomplished.

Servus,

Phil