Day 6: 6th!

Game 9:
Won 17 - 12 v Austria

Austria lost their quarter-final in sudden death the evening before after being ahead most of the game so we knew their heads could be down and another of our flying starts could put us in the driving seat. We came out on O and smoothly knocked in a score. The D line came on looking determined to get a break straight away and pressure forced the Austrians into turns. They struggled to make inroads into the Austrian defence until Celine magnificently took down a huck from Pete. The sideline went crazy, the Austrians looked down, and the D line used that energy and momentum to rattle in 3 more breaks thanks to a combination of Irish pressure and surprising drops. At 5 - 0 the Austrian offence recovered and they scored 3 before the half. Our O line was in no mood to give up anything in this half though, with Foxi in particularly good form.

The second half started much as the first half had finished. Austria were making less mistakes and scoring most O points but our O line was still finding life comfortable. Austria were marking us under, thinking that we didn't have much of a deep game, a theory we disproved! Not playing myself helped us out here, giving James and Fiona two big male cutters to huck for. At 13 - 5 Austria finally adjusted their D and we tired a bit as we had against Switzerland, Hungary and Slovakia and started making simple errors on offence. Austria got a few breaks back but after a couple of frantic points our offence found its calm and finished the game out.

Game 10
Lost 17 - 11 v Germany

A great game to end the tournament against easily the most spirited team we had faced, and the most interesting team tactically. They mixed up their offence formations a lot but generally favoured a 4 - 3, usually as a disguised iso. I was looking forward to playing D and trying to mess up their shape with some poaches.

We tried to remain focused in the warm up but I think that we all knew 6th was a huge achievement for us and we didn't start the game running as hard as usual. At 4 - 0 down we took a timeout, woke up and scored the next 3 points. Germany upped their level again to take those breaks back straight away, we fought back again to take another before the half and went in 9 - 6 down.

We tired in the second half and didn't manage to put away any of the turns we got on defence. Germany sneaked a couple more breaks and took the game 17 - 11, sparking off celebrations from both teams!