Although I did get a fair bit of home maintenance, furniture shifting and re-packing done this weekend thanks to the new carpet finally getting laid in the second bedroom on Friday afternoon, Saturday was pretty much a minimal work day as come 13:00, Mr. Brown and Dr. Storbeck arrived on my doorstep, followed by a surprise drop-in from Mr. Lotter Jr., completing our fearsome foursome.
The task for the day was of course to break out the XBOX 360 and squeeze in as many FIFA World Cup 2010 simulation games in as possible, trying our best to predict or equal what has been and what is still to come in the real World Cup.
As it turned out, lack of game time on Karl’s part actually meant he was performing ten times better than normal (:P), and opened the afternoon’s scoring account with a fantastic, cracking half-volley shot from a cross-in from yours truly, that simply rocketed past a despairing Ryan and Terrance keeper!
The afternoon progressed and we slotted in a lot of games, with Mr. Brown seeming to have the worst luck of the day, considering the fact that by the end of it all he was pretty much the overall loser, having lost the biggest number of games!
But in fairness we had some cracker games and for the most part they were all a very tight affair, usually ending up with only a single goal difference and on more than one occasion we found ourselves trading blows through extra time and then taking it all the way through to penalties, where some of us (Ryan for the most part), simply couldn’t get to grips with EA’s new penalty taking system!
But hats off to them for providing us with some absolutely tense moments, some brilliant goals (that Ronaldo shot from Ryan was an absolute beauty!) as well as the usual array of howlers, like Karl’s missing of various open goal tap-in opportunities! :)
But the simulated soccer couldn’t go on forever because the main drive for Saturday’s get together was of course the big 16:00 quarterfinal clash that saw an in form Argentina take on a just as in form Germany (who I am behind to take this whole damn thing!) and what a match for the Germans it proved to be! My bountiful snacks that I had stocked up on for the extravaganza kept flowing from hand to mouth and the disbelief of how easy Germany was making it look in dismantling Diego Maradona’s team just kept on growing!
Around half time I set about getting out of my cosy couch and started up the fire, which then happily burned itself down to some fine coals as the game reached it’s rather unexpected conclusion, marking the moment where we switched gears by bidding farewell to Ryan who had another engagement to get to, leaving Mr. Brown, Dr. Storbeck and I to put together a lekker braai and enjoy some more hanging out time.
Despite my attempts to ensnare them into watching the second match for the evening at my place, they resisted my charms and instead opted to hit the long ride home and catch the first bit on the radio, thereby saving them a much later return to Bellville. In fairness, I can’t really argue with that logic, but they did miss out on some great snacks I tell you! ;)
So thanks guys, it was an absolute blast having you around for the footy. Maybe next time we’ll be lucky and Mr. Dean and Mr. Oosthuizen will also be able to join us for an even bigger clash of the Titans!
(But the footy visits didn’t quite stop there believe it or not, because Sunday was still on its way and we had a last visit before their trek to Potchefstroom from Wayne and Candice to enjoy, and little did I know that Wayne had literally just laid his grubby paws on FIFA 10 – and you just know we HAD to test it out on our return from supper…)