Euro Cup Fever!

Orange. Everything is covered in Orange!!

There is more Orange out now than there was for Queen’s Day! The reason? The Euro Cup Football Tournament started on Friday. The tournament is being jointly held in Poland and the Ukraine this year. 16 teams are taking part and have been divided into 4 pools. The first round of games started on Friday and the finals take place on the 1st of July. Here in the Netherlands, Euro Cup fever has slowly been building

I am still feeling all soccer-ed out from the 2010 World Cup held in SA and I am not sure I am ready for more soccer fever! It just feels too soon. Normally we are not exposed to the Euro Cup much since SA does not participate. But since the Netherlands plays and is quite a strong team, it is really big here. My threshold for soccer (most sports actually!), is quite low and I am struggling to get excited about this tournament only two years since the end of the World Cup in SA. But Justin is really happy that there is another month of solid sport on again!

There is mixed feelings about what the Netherlands performance will be in the tournament. The general feeling from people we know seems to be that the Dutch team is not at their strongest at the moment and some people think they won’t even make it through the first round, lol. The media, however, is adding some pressure by saying that it is the last chance for some of the great names to win it as they most likely won’t be playing anymore by the next tournament.

Yesterday was the first game for the Dutch side against Denmark. We proudly wore all our Orange gear to watch the game at a pub at the old harbour with a group of Justin’s work colleagues. The Dutch tried their hearts out but unfortunately lost 1 – 0. Not the best of starts and a real pity. Apparently, they went on to win the 1988 tournament after losing the first game. The Dutch squad play Germany on the 13th of June and Portugal on the 17th of June. They are in quite a tough pool and will have to improve the outcome of the games if they hope to get to the next round. We will have to wait and see what happens this time.  

In other news our tax forms are officially finished and posted off, yay! Now we can look forward to doing our SA tax. Oh yay. Not.

Justin played cricket with the 3rd side again today. Since his sterling batting performance last weekend, 38 not out and saving the game, he was chosen to open the batting today. So he opened the batting and the bowling, lol. It is quite a change in opinions for the team since they usually think that an opening bowler should bat last and this was one of Justin’s great frustrations of last year. The team has changed somewhat since last year and this has probably helped. Hopefully this year he will have more opportunities to prove himself as a batsmen as well as a bowler. His figures today were 20/3 off 7 overs and he made 21 runs before being run out. Well done!

Justin is in Nigeria for work this week. He is working on a container terminal project in Lagos. Bron is not exactly excited about him a) going to Nigeria and b) a week after a crazy plane crash in Lagos! He flies on Monday and returns on Saturday morning. Please be safe and come back in one piece!

Hope you are well and have a good week!

x