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Monday, July 16, 2007

Live from Bermuda

I have the enviable task this week of writing my journal from the beautiful island of Bermuda. Indeed, the City Stars are on a road trip to the British overseas territory and the island is certainly fascinating to a history/politics junkie like me. Despite having a very similar system to the UK (bicameral system with one house being elected and the other being appointed), I have still been attempting to understand the nuances of Bermudian politics and hope to learn more on our four night stay here.

Okay, so i’ll be as brief as i can with the compliments, but this place is simply paradise. We are staying at the Grotto Bay Beach Resort in Hamilton Parish which is about as pictureseque as you can imagine. The sea is a light blue and you can see to the bottom. We also have a small sunken shipwreck just off of the beach, so many of the players have been snorkelling to see it close up. We are on the north side of the island (which has white sand) and are hoping to venture to the south side of the island (which has pink sand) and to witness this rare phenomenon.

The team went into the capital city of Hamilton (yes, a different Hamilton) yesterday and enjoyed the Copa America final between Brazil and Argentina. It was an excellent opportunity to bond further as a team and we all enjoyed a night out. We will have a training session later today and will watch Bermuda host Crystal Palace Baltimore.

Since, this is part holiday and part soccer business, I will save my readers from anything overly academic in this journal, but know that I am formulating something new for the next article.

On the soccer side of things, I returned to the lineup for our first match-up with Bermuda on July 6. We won the game 2-0 in front of a boisterous Green Army fan club and I managed to play for the last 30 minutes. My hamstring was still quite tight but, nonetheless, it was great to play again.

Two days later, we played our fourth installment against our rivals, the Cincinnati Kings and won 2-0 once again. I managed to make a brief appearance- and had a really good view of our second goal- but was unable to get on the score sheet.

Overall, we managed to really get the better of the Kings this season, sweeping the four game series, but no game was ever easy and the Kings always put up a considerable fight with our winning goals coming close to the end of their respective games.

After our brief home stand, we flew into Boston for two games on the East Coast against New Hampshire and Western Mass. There had been numerous changes to the squad over the past month, so the road trip provided a great opportunity to work on team chemistry again and get to know the new players.

On Friday, we drew against New Hampshire 1-1 in what was a disappointing result for us. The Phantoms have played well against us this year in both games, but we felt we deserved the three points here. I played for the last 5-10 minutes or so and was begging for a cross to the far post in the hopes of winning the game.

On Saturday, iI was out of the lineup for the Western Mass game. It was a brutal affair with a serious eye injury coming to our forward, Gerardo Alvarez. Again, we drew 1-1 and had to settle for just two points in New England.

‘The Professor’ Glen Duerr