Sour Balls Syndrom?

Friday morning several people were sporting shades, bed heads and tiny little blacksmiths working away inside their heads. Despite this, none was missing at breakfast court! Off we went for our first training session that day - oh, how heavy you feel when you go from astroturf and moulded studs to a sandy grass pitch and real second row shoes. Especially if you first sat on a bus for 19 hours and then played some rugby the day before...not to mention danced at a student night club necking 1 euro drinks like water in Sahara.

When everyone were in desperate need of some relax time and the ladies team had lost the Battle of the hot water, our german hosts sorted out lunch and took us downtown. Pictures was taken left, right and centre (if you could fool someone to point at something, and by that break tour rule number 3, that was extra special). A lot of us started blaming the town of Leipzig for some foul air pollution, possibly from the power plants nearby, but turned out to be one bearded player who clearly had had one too many the night before... Beer drinking in a public place is btw completely OK in Bundesligaland and highly recommended.

When everyone had found their way back to the bus we drove once again to the pitch, curiously comparing shopping bags and eagerly awaiting some pre-training snacks. Bellies full with bread, raisin, nuts and juice (ready for more air pollution the next day?) the men's team went out training on their own and the ladies spent a memorable 90 minutes with the Leipzig ladies where some lucky second rows got treated to a full frontal! Woo woo! I was glad to see people were sticking to the flower power theme, even in very private details.

By the time dinner was served (slightly slowed down by tourists not remembering what they'd actually ordered) some seemed to be quite cranky. We realised it might be the late hour that caused some people not being able to take a joke they weren't even involved in, but more probably it was SBS - the male version of PMS (Sour Balls Syndrom). The choice between taking the tour bus back to the hotel and staying out late the night before the game was free, but clearly people felt very responsible and went to bed early. Surprise, indeed!