Finally

It seems to be that time of the year for Grand Finals of various descriptions. Bruce had some luck (or should I say, showed some excellent form) in his recent cricketous endeavours and speaking for myself it's a relief finally to say that after many appearances as bridesmaid (a word just crying out for a possessive apostrophe), we finally cracked the local social volleyball grand final. As I mentioned some months ago, our team had rather a bad habit of blowing it come grand final time, despite dominance through the season. My, what a different experience last night was. This season, we were constantly sitting about halfway down the ladder. One of our good hitters left us and we struggled early on to field a full side. We had some good games but we had some shockers too. It was a bit of a mixed bag. We finished 4th on the ladder, meaning we would play the top team in the semi-final. It's amazing what you can do when you completely don't care about winning or losing. Being the underdogs, we never expected to win against a team that had beaten us only 2 weeks before. But we just went out to have a good time and I don't think we've played like that all season. We blocked nearly everything. The passing was great, which made my job as setter much easier, and therefore gave us better attacking opportunities, which we used to good effect. We had a lot of fun and made the grand final. Playing last night, we didn't expect to lose but we weren't really worried either way. After losing so many grand finals, we were a bit over just being there, so again, we were relaxed enough just to get on with the game rather than getting all bothered and flustered because we lost the first set. I think it was this level-headedness that did it for us in the end. The opposition was playing to win: jump serves, going for the big spikes and quick plays, while we just plugged away, concentrating on getting the ball in. After they won the first set, we made the observation that the margin pretty accurately reflected the number of serves we put into the net. Fix that, we thought, and we'll come out winners. So just making a concerted effort to land our serves put the pressure back on them; they kept making as many service errors and in the end I think it was our attitude that won it for us. The flip side of that is that it wasn't really that emphatic a victory. We were just "about bloody time too" then we went to the pub and had a beer. But now that we've won a grand final I can say what I'm about to say. When you lose a grand final, what I'm about to say always sounds bitter and bad-sportsmanlike but we won, so I'm not just having a whinge: the umpiring was shocking! Now, I'm a setter and I pride myself on knowing how to hit the ball properly. Our umpire didn't call 2 hits on anyone the entire season. No... there was once: a few weeks ago, a team was scrambling to get the ball back over and on their third hit, an inexperienced player stuck her hands up and pushed the ball up. Her hands were all over the place, the ball spun backwards and dribbled over the net, landing just inside the line. The umpire gave them the point, till I looked up, shrugged my shoulders and said "Come on... that's not a set". Point to us. And I think it was this that actually lost games for us. Because while I do the odd shocker, I don't do nearly as many as a lot of other people, and if they were called, then other teams would lose more points than us, and we'd win more. That said, I'm taking a year off to concentrate on family duties. I might even treat myself to that ankle operation I've been wanting for a few years now. (Ahh, osteoarthritis... such a cunt)