A brief history of everything… (Well the last two months anyway!)

The last blog I wrote left me pretty broken after the National Championship final and that’s how I stayed for a while… Five weeks to be precise! I just couldn’t shake that elbow injury and despite several trips to hospital and numerous blood tests and scans, nobody could work out what was wrong. In early August I was ruled out of the upcoming series with Canada still none the wiser. It’s very frustrating to be stuck between injury and illness, watching all the fitness you’ve worked hard to build dwindling away.

I kept an eye on things from a distance and was pleased to see that the team had put in a great performance; surprising the well-drilled Canadians to win the series three games to two with one draw. You can see GB coach, Tom O’Connor’s thoughts here: http://www.gbwr.org.uk/main/news_item.php?ref=58 We finally found out that I was suffering from “cellulitis”, a bacterial infection of the skin cells, as well as having an “olecranon bursitis”. This is inflammation of the fluid sack that acts as the elbow’s natural shock absorber. After what seemed like an age, the infection subsided and I had the “bursa” aspirated (drained with a needle) to take the pressure off of the elbow joint. This meant that I could resume training just in time for the GB Cup!

Getting back into things was very tough. I’d lost a lot of my weight training, which made my movements less sharp. I’d also obviously lost a lot of my CV fitness. This really hit home after my second session back when I was very frustrated with my performance. After a bit of a sulk, I decided that I had to just focus on the stuff I could control and prepare as best of could for the forthcoming tournament.

The GB Cup was a superbly organised event, showcasing some of the world’s best teams at the Sport Wales National Centre in Cardiff. A round robin format before the crossovers saw GB register comfortable wins over Sweden and Belgium (55-36 and 58-53 respectively); not a bad start against the highest ranked team in Europe and the reigning European champions! Day two was a little tougher, starting with a defeat against second ranked team in the world, Australia. The Aussies were always in control but even dominant 3.5, “Ryley Batt” couldn’t stop a late GB rally to make the final score 52-50 in the antipodeans’ favour. Our second day of the day was a showpiece event against world bronze medalists, Japan. A large crowd of sponsors and VIPs, as well as friends and family looked on as GB comprehensively defeated the Japanese. A final score of 61-51 saw GB take second spot in the pool to set up a re-match with Belgium in the semi-final.

The Belgians pushed us far closer second time around, cleverly re-jigging their tactics to foil some of our play. The game stayed close for a while but GB ground out an excellent 53-50 win to claim a spot in the final alongside Australia, who had breezed past Japan earlier in the day. Unfortunately Australia were just too strong for us. They set a blistering pace, establishing a big lead after the first quarter that we never managed to claw back. Despite some gutsy rugby we just couldn’t close the gap, leaving the boys from down under to take the final and the GB Cup 59-50. We were obviously disappointed not to win, but to have beaten the third and fourth seeds in the world, as well as the current European champions (twice) was a great achievement!

Three weeks of intensive training at Norfolk followed the GB Cup as we entered our final preparations for the European Championships in Nottwil, Switzerland. Finally, in peak condition we boarded the plane on the 30th September with one goal, to become champions of Europe!

I’ve been keeping a diary of our progress out here and I’ll be posting the first installment of it VERY soon, so keep checking back…. Or, if you just can’t wait, check out my daily updates at www.twitter.com/AndyBarrow2012

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