Twenty four hours after the euphoria of getting our first Maccabi points on the board against Canada, we were back in action against the USA. I have been told, but not have verified with every player, that most of the US squad consists of college players who are on sports scholarships. This means that they have to study a bit and then get to kick around a football for the rest of the day. Nice life...
It’s also rumoured that the squad have been bankrolled by Kirk Douglas who has a relative (a grand-daughter possibly) in the team and that they were able to fly out two weeks ahead of the games to train together. Not that they really needed to – they are light years ahead of the rest of the field here and through simple and accurate passing and movement, they scored a hatful of goals against us that ran into double figures. I actually don’t know what the score was because I lost count, as apparently did everyone else, because everyone had a different tally and the official Maccabiah website put down that we had won, which definitely wasn’t true!
It’s hard to know what we could have done differently to keep the scoreline down – we were playing against a team that were probably of Women’s Premier League standard and since I watched two thirds of the game (and the majority of their goals go in) from the bench, after a while, I just decided to admire them. It’s great to see that there are a bunch of Jewish women who are that good at football. I never thought I would see the day... and they are a really nice bunch of girls to boot!
I got 27 minutes of chasing shadows but did manage to win two tackles! But they were so good, I didn’t even get the ball at my feet to try and play a pass.
My parents were in the crowd to watch me, so it was a proud moment to come on and play in front of them. Hope they get to see a bit more of me on the pitch while they are here...
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