mainly about netball possums!

I am a champion!

My netball team won the premiership last night! We lost last week so we had to play to get into the final which was at 6.45pm. If we won that play off then we played in the grand final at 8.30!

The place we play at is extremely strange - most of the players are recycled from one game to another. Everyone seems to know who is on our team as we only play for the one team.

Most of us seemed to have decided that we didn't really want to play another season with this group - all reason quite different from each other but it all comes down to the organisation of the place.

Here are some of the reasons why we wanted to stop playing there. 1) We have to pay $10 per game (which is only 30 minutes!) even the finals. Most places you play for standard games but not for the finals. At this price you would expect to have decent umpiring. 2) Lack of umpires - most netball is 2 per game but we only ever got 1 and they were shocking at that! Often they would lose control of the game or were influenced by the players who acted/reacted the best 3) Extremely rough play. Netball is a non contact sport but here it is quite different. If the umpires had more control then maybe we wouldn't have so many injuries. 4) playing the same players week after week - where is the rotation? Often the team would change but the players would be the same - in different coloured t shirts!

So I couldn't really stand it any more! I decided that I was over it all. I was sick (and still am) of turning up and not playing at the time when I thought I was but sometimes 10 - 15 minutes later. for a 30 minute game I was sometimes out for 2 1/2 hours! Okay for a 7 pm start but if the game is at 9.30 and you don't get home until 11pm it makes it long and tiresome. You often are revved up and don't sleep for a while.

Now my complaints are out of the way I will give a quick summary of the games. We were playing for a spot in the final. The other defender (who I travel with) and I had decided that we didn't really want to win as we couldn't be bothered hanging around for so long. We tried to not play to our best but we ended up winning by about 6 goals!

So we sat in the bar and talked as a team about crap things. It was quite funny really. We filled up on soft drink and greasy food - great for energy we told ourselves. Then we headed out to play.

The same defender and I had decided (individually) that seeing we got to the grand final we were going to win! We started of badly, there was a serious amount of angst amongst the players at the other end of the court. The umpire told everyone to settle down or she would throw the relevant players off the court (later discovered that they were both the captains). We were down at half time. We worked hard. We defended well - as did they. But we triumphed by one goal. Woo hoo!

I might just add that I was playing against a tree! She was tall and she was wide. I am tall (175 cm, 5'9'') and I only came up to her shoulder! But she was nice and there was little or no animosity between us.

So now I have another trophy for the shelf - bloody ugly thing!

I got home to discover that I had a visitor hanging (literally) on the back door. The cat was intrigued! She sat looking up and watching the possum that had decided that my back door looked like a tree. It was very exciting for all of us.