So it is confirmed, we are in the top 8 again. We will play at 10 (11 CET) tomorrow against… Germany.

But first, back to today. The pool we had included the winner from the first round, Germany, the host nation Portugal and Israel, a team we had struggled beating in Hungary. We anticipated that we would end up fighting for the 3rd place against Israel, and fighting for one of the two best third places against teams in the other pools. It’s the olympic tournament format with 12 teams: 3 pools of 4, the best 2 in each pool and the two best 3rd go to the top 8, the last one and the 4th in each pool go to bottom 4. So we needed at least to win against Israel, and to minimize our point difference in the other two games. The score after Portugal was ok, 17 points down. The second game was a struggle as expected, but we turned a 0-14 situation at halftime to a 19-14 at full time.

Before the final game against Germany, we knew we were competing with Georgia and Turkey, who were the other 3rd in their pool. Turkey had a -60 point difference – all in all we needed to lose by less than 48 points.

We told the players about the need to minimize point difference, but didn’t tell them about the 48 points, as we wanted them to play the best possible rugby, and not to start counting the points.

For a game it was. Germany took an early 10-0 lead in the first half, by scoring two tries in the first 3 minutes. But we reached halftime on the same score, thanks to an awesome defense play by everyone, both in the team work and in the tackles. At the break, we focused on that score: we were not far behind, we could win that game.

And we got close… After the break, we managed to score a beautiful try, by Gina, converted by Karin. We could hear the crowd cheering ‘Gina, Gina’ (yes we have quite a few supporters). We were just 3 points behind. But Germany kept fighting, scored a new try on an interception in our 22m. They added a 4th try in the last minute, which sealed the game. We lost 22-7, which gave us a cumulative point difference of -27 in the pool phase, ahead of Turkey… We were into the top 8!

It’s the fourth time in a row that we reach the top 8 in a EM round. We have secured our place in the Trophy next year, and we’re giving ourself a chance to reach higher in the rankings. This did not happen by chance, we fought hard for this, had to fight hard also during the games we would not win.

At the end of the game against Germany, ohh, we were happy as if we had won! Sometimes it feels like this.

Our supporters in the stadium were as happy as we were!

A little inside story… Something nice happened before the last game. Our captain, Karoline, was having a tough day. She was back from a small injury and was struggling to get back in the game. We could see that in the first two games. For the last game she decided that she needed to focus on herself. Being the captain is a job: she leads the warm up, talks to the team, encourages everyone. It’s a lot of attention and energy given to others. She does it extremely well, and it shows in our games. But at this game, she wanted a break. She asked Ingrid Ringsrud, the vice-captain, to relieve her and take charge. Ingrid did a great job, and Karoline had a fantastic game.

It takes a special kind of person to temporarily give away captainship, in the middle of a tournament. It shows humility. It also takes a special kind of person to step in and take over captainship 30min before the game. It shows leadership. We’re lucky to have Karoline and Ingrid working together like this.