We have wifi at the stadium, so we can give news 🙂 It’s slow though…

We played our first game against the Netherlands. We lost 39-5. We had a very bad start, unable to move forward ball in hands, and missing an unusually high number of tackles in the first half. The first half was probably our worst half this year.

After the break, things changed. We managed to increase continuity in our game, especially in tackle situations. It gave us the forward momentum we needed to score a first try. Unfortunately, we also did a few mistakes which gave opportunities to the Dutch players.

Try scored by Kari

Starting team: Karoline, Gina, Ingrid, Karin, Ragnhild, Kari and Tonje. All subs came in in the second half.

Now is a long lunch break, next game 13:51 local time (12:51 Norwegian time)

All the games are streamed.

Waiting for the bus to the stadium. Roaming is hugely expensive here in Ukraine, I may not be able to post news before late afternoon.

Light afternoon training session near the hotel, we played a few ball games, including a ‘walking touch’ – no tries were score, unsurprisingly. E & T joined the fun. Kari demonstrated her yoga skills by leading a yoga session. We finished with a visualization exercise.

The staff did an excellent job at planning the day, with all breaks at the right time to watch the world cup games. We’re now cheering for Iceland!

We took the jersey ceremony a bit earlier than usual, as the program was unclear for the afternoon. M & T had the honor of handing out jerseys to the players. It was the first cap for three players, Ine, Rebekka and Ellen. The most capped players in the team are Ingrid and Kari (5th cap this year).

We had a break, and met for long, relaxed lunch at the hotel.

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We had our main training session early this morning, from 08:00 (07:00 Norwegian time) to 09:20 in the stadium where we’ll play tomorrow. M and I woke up even earlier to get fruits and water from the nearby shop.

A long bus ride took us across the city, we learnt that Dnipro used to host the spacecraft factories of the soviet union. Sputnik was made just a block away from the stadium.

We’re quite happy that we had an early training, it’s going to be a hot day. We worked on our passes, defense and rucking. Not everything was perfect, but that’s usually the case on the day before the tournament.

Now is breakfast time! We’ll have a team meeting after, and a break until lunch.

Players and staff went for a light afternoon jog, along the beautiful Dnipro river. Dnipro is an industrial city, architecturally dominated by post-WWII sovietic style. The broad river adds a welcome element of charm. Jogging among locals taking their afternoon walk was nice, it feels like we share a bit of the city’s everyday life.

We had our diner at the hotel, eastern europe style. A light diner 😉

We met up after diner on the 7th floor for a team meeting. We enjoyed the sunset on the river and went through tomorrow’s program.

It’s been a long day, we all woke up early, had a long journey. It was good to arrive today to get time to acclimatize to Ukrainian temperatures. That will be a challenge on Saturday.

We have arrived, met our liaison officers, Masja, Masja, Alina, Janna (or something like this), and checked in at the hotel.

We found our physio 🙂

@gardermoen

Meeting everyone at Gardermoen for an early start. Mats (M) is our manager for this trip, standing-in for K who couldn’t make it. Elain (E) will join us a bit later today.

Second day in Amsterdam. The challenge of the day was to survive without a manager, as Kirsten had to travel back home earlier.

We had two pool games, against the dukkies (netherland’s development team) and a german team.

The first game was the closest of the weekend – it finished on a frustrating draw, with a last minute converted try against us. We had to win the second game with a margin higher than 10 points to qualify for the semi finals. We secured that rather quickly with 4 tries in the first half, thanks to a very strong game, maybe our best of the weekend.

Moving on to the semi got the coaches worried, as we were entering injury time. We down-prioritized the semi, a bit frustratingly, but all our objectives for the weekend had been met, and we needed to look at European championship.

Best player award went to Karin, for the energy she played with during the tournament. She started rugby with NTNUi, when I was coaching the team. She is the only player in the team this year who has been in the national team with me before. Great to see how far she has come!