Original article at hockey.org.au

With three months to go until the ABN AMRO Hockey Champions Trophy Tournament in Melbourne, the Kookaburras travelled to Invercargill, in the far, far south of New Zealand, for arguably our biggest tournament of the year. The Oceania Cup, our World Cup qualification event.

Now anyone that has anything to do with sport will inevitably experience the highs and lows of their game at some stage. Many people will know that indeed, we did have a successful win in the Oceania cup in August over New Zealand, therefore automatically qualifying the team for next years World Cup. An obvious high in our year given the cut-throat nature of the tournament. Anything less than a win would have seen us off to another tournament somewhere in the world (also ruining our Champions Trophy preparation), with only the winner qualifying. That’s the last chance, after that, no World Cup.

It was a really interesting game with so much on the line. Pressure situations should bring out the best in a team; I think we responded well to the pressure. The result, 3 – 1 (2 – 1 until we scored a late goal in the 70th minute), Probably didn’t reflect the dominance we had on the match, which was a bit disappointing. We had a number of chances to put the game out of reach well before the end of the game, but New Zealand are quality opposition, so nothing comes easy.

However, not everyone would realise that the final in the Oceania Cup was overshadowed by another game that same weekend, perhaps holding even more significance. I’m talking about the bragging rights up for grabs in the grand final of the Kookaburras fantasy AFL competition, the Kooka Cup. This year’s fantasy footy season proved it’s a young persons game. Recently retired full backs Matthew Wells and Bevan George were hopeless all year, barely winning a game between them. Maybe next season someone will teach them how to use ‘the internet’… Another cellar dweller Fergus Kavanagh’s obvious disdain for fantasy footy disrespected the entire competition for the second year running, using two trades out of a possible 20 is unacceptable. His position in our 1st division is under threat.

Anyway, at the pointy end of the ladder, I found myself up against 200 game Kookaburras midfielder Liam De Young in the final. Now I realise what everyone would be thinking, “isn’t that a bit of a mismatch”. Well, heres the thing, ‘DY’ won… convincingly.

I was shattered. My team couldn’t cope with the favouritism and the extra pressure of a final.

After such an incredibly important win over New Zealand in one of the biggest matches of the year, I’m now left rueing my captaincy choice or who I should or shouldn’t have had on my bench, in a fantasy, yes that’s right, imaginary competition. I am struggling to see how it can get any lower than that.

One of the things that came through the fantasy league was that favouritism doesn’t mean anything in a final, winning is never easy. A higher spot on the ladder or a higher ranking means absolutely nothing. Perhaps the pressure is also increased on the perceived favourite. Now, am I talking about the Kookaburras hockey team or my fantasy footy team?

I took bitter sweet feelings away from New Zealand, I’m just glad the bitter feelings were involved in a fantasy world. I’ll take qualifying for a World Cup any day!