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Home / Sport

Hockey: The girls about town

Michael Burgess
By Michael Burgess
Senior Sports Journalist·Herald on Sunday·
4 Feb, 2012 04:30 PM4 mins to read

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One toastie maker to feed 18 athletes. A physiotherapist that spends five hours each night making frozen slushie drinks.

Cans of Wattie's spaghetti carted over from New Zealand.

A stray dog escorting you into a restaurant, where waiters operate a paperless system. Regular credit card chaos in the supermarket and heavy adoration from the locals.

Welcome to life on tour with the Blacks Sticks in Argentina.

Home for the week has been a four star hotel located in downtown Rosario, a few blocks from the Parana river (second biggest in South America after the Amazon).

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It is easy to navigate your way around; half the roads lead away from the water, the rest intersect to form a perfect grid.

Not that there is time for sightseeing. The day starts with a team walk after breakfast to a local park for stretching and some games with a football and a frisbee.

Local attention is usually guaranteed; Horns toot and onlookers whistle, with cries of "Hola guapa" (Hey beautiful) as the Kiwis pass.

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After some free time in the morning, there is a meeting to discuss penalty corner strategies, followed by the lunchtime snack of toasted sandwiches.

Team manager Debbie Balme somehow feeds the entire team using a single toastie maker, though the precious supplies of Wattie's spaghetti were rationed as the week went on.

Two hours later there is a pre-game briefing, where players go through tactics and strategies; coach Hager encourages his players to do their own scouting and come up with plans to nullify their individual opponents.

After a pre-game meal - often cereals and toast ("most of us eat cereal twice a day," says Stacey Michelsen, "the other teams think we are a bit weird"), the players embark on the 45 minute bus ride to the stadium.

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On the journey along bumpy cobbled roads you can still see horse and carts, motorcyclists zipping by without helmets or proper shoes are a common sight, as are the cartoneros (men or sometimes whole families, out collecting huge piles of cardboard and paper well into the night, to be taken to recycling as their only source of income).

Estadio Mundialista sits on an arid patch of land on the outskirts of town, with large cactuses scattered around the neighbouring backyards.

It's basic, with no shelter in the stands from the blistering sun. The press boxes are handily located pitch side in each corner; handy that is until they water the turf, between matches and at halftime, which drenches any uncovered equipment in the front two rows.

The Black Sticks have their pre-game top-up of crackers and honey, before hitting the turf. After an extended warm-up, they come together for the final time; a talk, the anthems, a chant of "Go Kiwis", a banging of sticks and battle begins.

To combat the searing heat the team has brought a slushie machine, borrowed from High Performance Sport New Zealand. Team physiotherapist Fiona O'Connor spends five hours each night making 10 litres of the orange and lemon lime flavoured concoctions.

Their hotel has also hosted the Dutch, Korean and Japanese delegations but there is little mixing between the teams, apart from a polite hello in the lifts or corridors.

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Free time is spent in the hotel, with the occasional trip to a supermarket, though some of the players were a bit perturbed that staff there insisted on taking a scratching of their credit cards.

Meanwhile, life in Argentina ticks by; things remain difficult, with heavy unemployment.

On most measures Rosario is struggling, though on the P.P.M.W.C.P.C index (percentage of potential Miss World candidates per capita), it is soaring. Here there is surely the most outrageous concentration of female beauty on the planet.

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