OK, U.S. fans ... what's the realistic chance for the U.S. WNT in Beijing?

johncoxon 10
keely 9
bigmick 7
John 6
Snoody 6
Goalie64 5
majwalrus 5
Paul Watts 5
foozbear 5
mani 4

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[Wassie]

Check-in is Monday 18th. They are looking forward to coming back. Almost got the program to a "normal" place.

[garli]

Oi, and another tie.  I'm pretty sure they have to win one game to make it to the medal round.

[Wassie]

Better than losing. Also, isnt that about how their results have gone against Japan in the recent past. I mean very close affairs. Tho I think Japan has generally had their number. So good result tho not as good as a win. 2 points after first two games....realistically I thought max they could have had was 3 so not too bad thus far.

[garli]

Don't make me think.  It's not even 5 am!

[Mo79]

Whats realistic?

If you asking what they would be happy to take?
Better than their previous finish ie The Madrid World Cup.So that would be 5th place.

Where do I think they will actually finish?
Too early to say.They've only played one match and they burgled a draw(to their credit).

Have this conversation once they start picking up points.

[Wassie]

errm they have now played two games............

[contramowly]

errm they have now played two games............

Now, the EASY pool is becoming the DRAWING pool or watch out the goal average, as now, all teams  can finish second. ALL teams, as Argies commited again the same mistake... 

Question to Umpires, what the hell saw DE KLERK to show a yellow card to GONZALEZ OLIVA? 

[David_Underdown]

Two bad tackles in a row according to the FIH reports http://www.worldhockey.org/olympics/

[keely]

And according to the commentary, after two green cards had been issued for tackling already (one to each team).

[contramowly]

Two bad tackles in a row according to the FIH reports http://www.worldhockey.org/olympics/

have you seen it?  I saw a simple foot fault, not even intended...

[contramowly]

And according to the commentary, after two green cards had been issued for tackling already (one to each team).

keely you must teach me to quote twice at the same post... the comment is WRONG  No tackling, but foot fault, maybe a tactical one, but did not seem to me other intention but playing the ball. Maybe  De Klerk wanted to be the first experimenting... I saw it as a quite strange mistake. But I only have the TV images...

[keely]

Well, we're getting off-topic to the ARG v GB game and we're discussing this topic already here, so let's leave the US thread alone in this respect.

I don't have to be the teacher - Craggsy already did a HowTo on How to quote multiple people.

[TOTC]

I know Keely will pole-axe me for saying this, but the umpiring has been quite dodgy thus far. Barber's goal today came off a deflection from her own foot. Okamura withheld the ball after it came off the post on one occasion. Clear "advancing" calls in the circle were not called on some teams and were always called on others.

At the highest levels, I think the game is starting to become too fast to call. I'm not saying they need to go to grass, but if there was a way to slow things down in real time (wooden sticks? seamless microstitched leather ball with cork?) it should at least be looked at.

I can see the day when a ball is sent into the goal with such speed that everyone assumes the ball hit the goal post. Or someone gets a head injury ...

[keely]

I can see the day when a ball is sent into the goal with such speed that everyone assumes the ball hit the goal post.

That's exactly why we have video replay.

(And BTW, that happened in a game I was reserving two years ago when we as umpires didn't have access to the video replay but the players on the bench could look over to the video monitor on the tech table with ESPN's coverage and see the slow motion replay of a PS hitting the inside crossbar and coming out. Not a happy time!)

I'm not going to pole-axe you, TOTC. I haven't had the same privilege as you obviously have in watching all the games. I've been impressed with what I've seen in the three games I've had access to. The only point I'll make is that the key at this level is not to call everything but try to call the things that make a difference in the game, which can look to many as though they're simply "missing" a lot of calls. Even then, we'll miss big calls at times too - we're just trying to do that as seldomly as possible and hopefully video replay will continue to progressively advance to assist us in those times.

[Wassie]

If you isolate incident by incident then you will be easily able to criticise the umpires. But you need to look at the whole game and see if they had an impact upon the end result. I dont think an umpire has caused a game to end up with the wrong result.