Wednesday - Master McPhail

Yesterday was pretty much a free day for us Umpires. We took in the old town again and pretty much took it easy.

At 5pm I had a photo shoot with some of the other Masters and Master Marano, as they are planning on publishing an update to the condensed encyclopaedia. Master Nunez was involved with that too - reminiscent of the photo shoot we had in Canada in 1996 for the last edition of the encyclopaedia.

After that it was out to dinner with all the Umpires. We arived at a restaurant in a Hotel, where incidentally the German team are staying. We were ushered to our tables and had an okay meal. The German team arrived and we noticed they were sent upstairs for their meal.

Turns out the restaurant staff must have thought we were the German Team so we got THEIR meal (with one drink of coke) - while upstairs they enjoyed a banquet complete with desert and drinks. grrrrr. Those Germans!!

Probably Andrew Niven behind that! :-)

Today we had the 3 hour Umpires meeting, where we were talked through rules and protocols for the next 4 days. Lots of questions asked and I think everyone is perhaps understandably nervy - as we also feel the weight of a World Champs on our shoulders.

The new electronic scoring system was explained and demonstrated. It has been developed further since we saw it in Spain last year and is VERY impressive (a few screen shots are attached). It even includes patterns as well as sparring now so it should be interesting. I have put my name forward to have a crack at that in Ring one - but not sure if they will put new people on that system...depends how many umpires they have that have used it from the different countries I guess. Lots of the German umpires have used it but there is not allowed to be more than one umpire from each Country in any ring.

Master Davidson had put his name down as a Power breaking Referee - so we will hopefully come out of this with a lot more experience which will benefit ITFNZ. Tomorrow they will announce the Ring Councils and we will find out where they put us.

I called in to see the Team after lunch but they were out and about. We saw them briefly training this morning..and they looked fantastic. They were going through their stepping routines for Team Patterns and had all of the supporters clapping in time with their steps. This attracted a lot of attention and looked great.
The Team look happy and I was so proud seeing them today. Good luck team!

From tomorrow we are not even meant to talk to any team members, so that will be hard.
Mr Eccles is here now, joining Mr Ward, Mr Banicevich, Master Davidson and myself as the Umpires for New Zealand.
Tonight we have a Cocktail Reception thingy, dinner, then our last night`s sleep before it all begins. Very exciting!