We go down on, we go up two, and we sit. These have been our last 24 hours. The nightly break from physical activity has gone over well with the players, who are still bruised and battered, but who still have a lot left in the tank. We rest. The morning training was tough, the coach tinkered and the team ran a lot, and what they learned today will last for the whole year. The players expressed passion, excitement, and pain. So, we get up for the afternoon, free from the game. We finally get to sit down and take a breath.

It is tough to slow down, and to prevent that as well, the slow erosion of the players´ emotional states is evident. But hey, that is the name of the game. In the season, the players know that they must maintain concentration, intensity, and composure, and if they don´t, they will be thrown to the way-side like a seedless tomato is in the Spanish “Pan Tomate.” The intensity is neither comforting nor extraordinary, it is regular.

Until dinner, typically a recreational time of exploring, eating, and laughing, the spirits were surprisingly high in the massage room of the locker room area.

War always brings good and bad news, so, now we have recouped our lost goalies. Santamaría is back training and Cabrero is back with a vengeance, as he has welcomed his first daughter, Cloe. Moreover, the world championships of Tute, disputed between the Vázquez-León and Campo-Garro duos favored the former, even though they run the risk of being disqualified for ‘altering’ the rules…They are more similar to Dirty Harry and Jack Sparrow in the amount of wiggle-room they negotiated.

So tomorrow we play against Roda from the top-flight in Holland. The players are feeling the burn, the coaches too, but that means that progress has been made, and hopefully we will see that progress.

The Mole