Tuesday, May 27
21-20 doesn’t tell all.
Like the bruises on my arms and hips, the fact that we were down by 4 or 6 points at half time or that the ref was the worst we’ve ever had…
I played my last game of handball for the season on Saturday night. It was a big game, as we were bottom of the table and could make this team (coming 4th) drop a place or two. The court was full-size (which is about 1.5 times bigger than ours) and super-slick and both teams were psyched up and ready to play hard. And hard we played.
Handball is a tough, hard, physical game. What makes it great is when there are two good referees and the game is played properly: physical and tough but not nasty. Unfortunately we only had one ref and he is possibly the worst in the league. I won’t go into detail about unfairness or bias; I’ll just say that both teams suffered, as the poor refereeing lead to anger and nastiness rather than clean physical play.
Anyhoo, due to a lack of full-team training we were playing poorly and getting flogged, both on the court and on the board. Frustration leads to bad and nasty playing, which is bad for the player, the team and the game. I really struggled with keeping my cool with my self, the ref, the supporters and the opposition.
We had a good talk at half time and actually played the game properly: real physical and as a team. due to injuries and minimal subs a couple of us had to play in different positions than usual, but we managed to come back within a point behind (and could have scored an equaliser if the whole team had realised there were only a few seconds left on the clock). So in the end it was a frustrating game but also quite fulfilling to have been able to improve our play in the second half. The low score (and my bruises) tells of how physical a game it was. Bring on next season!
