Thursday, October 11, 2007

Grinding to a Halt

Well, in the depression which followed the loss to USA1 and the change in now starting to play I forgot to update my blog with the post script it deserved.

As many predicted the team exited the tournament in the quarter finals against a strong but not overly impressive USA team of Garner/Weinstein Katz/Jacobs Rosenberg/Zia. I should George Katz and his team and especially their captain Jan Martel for their kindness in providing the Australian Team with a complete system summary for every team in the Bermuda Bowl except their own - something that saw us exceptionally well prepared in terms of system.

The stats were:
Carry Forward -16
Segment 1 13-13
Segment 1 73-13 Clearly accounting for most of the margin by which we lost
Segment 1 10-40
Segment 1 49-25
Segment 1 27-23
Segment 1 12-26

Final Margin Lost by 92

12th 0.06
Murray-Andrew -0.68 -0.08 1.62 -0.63
13 -0.12
Pauline-Warren -1.98 0.60 1.02
21 -0.84
Ryszard-Bruce 0.70 -2.21 -1.83 1.13 -1.99

Why did this team do as well as they did. Here are some takes on that.
  1. They are long time friends who very much chose to play with each other resulting in no angst, oneupmanship or any other rivalries
  2. I have never captained a team when there were no arguments, heated discussions or other contratemps between partners or pairs. They simply knuckled down and did the business as they say
  3. They were the best practiced team I have ever captained
  4. They were focused on doing well and simply playing the game - see my earlier blog about the need for this focus
  5. Overall the team spirit was very much relaxed and an attitude of we can do it - even when we were running second last after the first day on a mere 33 VP's

I suppose the question which will be asked is where do our players rate among the likes of Helness, Zia, Bocchi etc. I don't think anybody would rate themselves in that league but remember that they are playing the bridge circuit in a major tournament at least once a month. Would our guys reach those levels if they had that type of background. Maybe or maybe not I simply don't know. What I do know is that living in Australia we have a very narrow focus on the big wide bridge world.

OK so those that can do and those that can't captain......so it is a move away from the frustrations of watching each and every board to playing in the Transnationals. This is a great tournament with many top international teams including many that have been knocked out of the main event. I am playing with Robert Krochmalik who flew over on short notice to partner me with Michael and Vivien Cornell, Jan Cormack and Allan Turner from NZ.

We started well reaching 30th but after matches 8-12 you can simply put a 1 in front of that position as we scores 2, 1, 11, 13, 13.

I was thinking I could write up a hand on which I did something brilliant, ok reasonably good, well OK then normal and can't think of anything.

So it is goodbye from Shanghai and thanks to all for the heaps of emails sent to me and the team with their good wishes.

Bye all from Shanghai
David.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

As A German, I have no particular relationship to Australia, but this blog made me a fan of this team and its captain.
Thanks a lot for sharing your thoughts with us.

Roland