Special thanks to Assistant Coach, Micky Johnston for the following match report from the Asian Champs.

Game 1:  Vietnam Swans Vs China Reds – Everyone arrived at the bus pick-up:  Good start.

Scotty said, “For the next 8 hours, what I say goes”. No one quibbled – looking good.

Ground arrival.  Lots of other buses, so obviously at right place.

Other teams in corporate uniform (especially liked the batik outfit from Indonesia), but we’d sold lots of t-shirts and caps on the bus to up our image.

10 minutes of “G’day, my names McGooly, what’s yours?”, followed by Scotty reading out his first team as the coach of the bestest mob in the world.  Then, it was GAME ON!

At first bounce, we knew we’d discovered a centre combo that could work together – bliss! Drew Franklin, Sam Grigg, Mick Hassett and Peter Bossink combined together (as they did tirelessly all day) to get the ball into our forward line for the first point of the entire Asian Cup 2007 to David Kemp.

Unfortunately, our scoring opportunities were very limited over the next 19.5 minutes, but there were some highlights, not least of which was Travis’ tussle against big Greg Stafford.  Twice, T was able to outmuscle the big S and deliver the ball in the Brothers Sharpleseseses’ direction. The first time, Sharples Marty was closest and almost bagged one, but alas, another point.

From then on, we struggled to keep up with the team chosen from the first country in the world to reach a population of 1 billion.

Captain Gus & Mixo Kris combined with Will across the half back line to keep the Red’s forwards honest, and the bastard son of A. Downer, M. Growder, got his hands on the ball a couple of times across the half forward line, but kicking goals was proving a challenge.

When the skies opened up 5 minutes into the first half, Scotty managed to keep his coaching notes from smudging, but was unable to gain heavenly intervention on the ground.

Final score did not reflect the close nature of the game, but they knew how to kick sausage rolls and we could only muster behinds.

Final Score: China Reds 4.2 (26) –  Vietnam 0.3 (3)