POST EVENT -
Mission Cup 2006, I called up the Rain Gods (see "Rain Gods" below) and requested help again and then went to bed thinking that there is nothing I can do but keep the faith. The heat on my face the glare, as my eyes struggled to open ... it was Friday morning and there was a perfect blue sky! 35 degrees today was the call from the radio - and damm irt was a blazer of a day. Could it hold out for at least one day of competition? I will not risk it! I amended the schedule to have several games on the Saturday morning especially for the overseas teams to make sure that they got some games in. Friday night, GB arrived, Indo strapped on their skates and a few local players joined in for a couple hours of scrimmage - it was awesome fun... and the adjustment the Town Council made to the lights was great but of course no one noticed. We hung up all the banners, prepared all the sound etc for the early start on Saturday then went off by 11pm (a miracle) and had a few beers with the lads at the Bungee Bar.

Saturday morning, games in 35+ degree heat. With bellies seasoned with local food and beer the lads from GB felt the pinch in the stomached... The afternoon started around 2pm with the under 12 games. 4 Teams from OFS and Canadian School joined in for a brisk battle of short games to decide the overall Champions ' War Devels" A remarkable achievement considering that I have been training them from day one and this is their 1st tournament 1st Place - felt great!

The Men came back in with some strong games from Indonesia, Piranhas, Black Hawks, SkateSports and Astrons however the real game of the day was the KXK and Great Britain - fast, hard and relentless! KXK taken it home in that game.

More soon..........


THE RAIN GODS
Ok, know this is honest!. I had sent out emails to all stating that the rain had not let up for two weeks and that the event must go on rain, hail or shine. Basically we had teams flying in from Great Britain and Indonesia. I told them we cannot be responsible for acts of god or if it just kept on raining, they committed to come anyway. So much for that effort to deter which was completely based on fear of rain and the fact that regardless of what we said on the outside, if it rained I would cop the blame and their would be some sorry faces around.

On Wednesday I went online with some sort of faint hope that the weather was about to change and that all would be great, to my disappointment that was far from the reality of the situation. The Buearo of Meteorology Singapore has forecasted thunderstorms and rain across Singapore for the next 3 days, hmmmm ok - let me see the chart for the next week, well you may have guessed it, rain and thunderstorms for the next week. Thinking that someone in that office may be too lazy to update the information or had fallen asleep watching some Chinese love movies during the heavy rains to date, I decided to look into the matter a little more. Reading through I found that the rainfall in April 206 was in fact 300% over the average to date, and there were still another 4 days of this month to go! Shit.

Ok so I spoke with the rain God. Know I will let you know that this is serious. In 2004 when we were preparing for the first APC, I did the same. We spoke, I requested a hold on the rain and the delivery was nothing short of amazing. After rain, rain, rain and even more rain it stopped for the APC and stayed dry till Sunday noon. This is true, it rained over the entire of Singapore including Tampines but NOT THE MILLENNIUM COURT!? It is going to rain, some one would say another, its raining at East Coast. I simply sat neatly behind the DJ consol and sad #*@?!! OFF it’s not going to rain and sure enough..... it held out until the last 15 minutes of the final game of the day!