TATHRA lawn bowler James Reynolds has been keeping BDN readers up-to-date right thoughout the Commonwealth Games, and here he reflects on his campaign.
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G’Day all!
We took on New Zealand in our first match and played pretty well, having early leads in the match.
Without sounding like a poor loser, twice we held good numbers to open up the match, however on both occasions the skip was off target and we got a lucky rub to get the shot.
In saying that, they certainly played the last five ends of the match better than us and won on the back of that by three shots.
Last Tuesday, we took on South Africa in a must-win match on the TV rink.
Apparently many back home saw the game and got to share the frustration that we as a team felt, where not one thing went our way as we were outplayed by the South Africans.
As you can imagine, we were quite disappointed to not progress further.
On a lighter note, I decided that since this would be my first televised game representing Australia, why not embarrass myself!
This was achieved whereby, when getting ready for the match, I thought I had taken my sweat wristband out of my bag.
When I went to put it on to stop my jacket sleeve going past my wrist, well bugger me, I couldn’t find it.
I still didn’t know where it was until after the match when I took my hat off, and oh look, there’s my sweatband inside my cap which I wore for the whole match for the world to see and all ask the same question, ‘What the hell is inside that blokes hat?’
The majority of my teammates are unaware of what it was, and no doubt now they will find out and I’ll be fined for being an idiot, even though I feel I should fine my teammates for not saying anything!
Just to finish on our competition, you wouldn’t believe it but the only two teams in our section ended up going on to meet each other in the gold medal match to show us they were the best two teams in the comp.
Talk about unlucky, getting stuck in a section with them.
Since our defeats we have been supporting our teammates in their quests for medals, and over the next few days I finally got to see some other events: powerlifting and the netball gold medal match.
I’ve been lucky enough to meet quite a few of the athletes now, including Damon Kelly, who I saw lift 209kg.
Can I just say a big ‘thank you’ to everybody who has shown such tremendous support both before and during the Games.
Not to win a medal hurts, and hopefully in four years time I get another opportunity on the Gold Coast.
Jimmy