BELARUS-WHITE RUSSIA-OVER THE LINE

 As you know, I am never short of a word or two, but today I am going a little off beam by telling you about the IIHF World Championships in the Daudzfunkcionaia Halle, Latvia. Belarus hosts it too. 

The Great Britain team, not known for its expertise in Ice Hockey, is ranked 19th in the tournament, has been playing and so far in their group has:

Lost to Russia 1-7, lost to Slovakia 1-2, lost to Denmark 2-3, BEAT Belarus 4-3 and have to play Sweden, Czech Rep, Switzerland in their group. Presently they lie 5th in the group. Probably not going to carry on, but who knows?! Ice hockey is the second most popular sport in Belarus after soccer.

The ice hockey tournament was originally due to be staged by cities Minsk @ Belarus and Riga @ Latvia, but for security reasons, Belarus has been scrapped and of course bubbles exist! Russian players appear under the name ROC as neutral athletes. Don't know where Belarus is?

But I need to talk about the round ball. England have played Belarus at soccer twice, only during the FIFA World Cup qualifier 2008 under Fabio Capello-remember him: away in Minsk 15/10/2008 winning 1-3 kicking off at 9.30am local time (7.30pm BST). 29,600 attended this game. The squad included in this game: James, Upson, Barry, Brown, Ferdinand, Bridge, Gerrard, Lampard, Walcott, Heskey, Rooney, Wright-Phillips, Crouch, Beckham. 

and at home Wembley with nearly 77,000 in the stadium England won 3-0 14th October 2009. This game: Foster was in goal, Terry, Johnson, Agbonlahor, Carlton Cole, Milner, Crouch (2), W-P (1), Ferdinand, Lennon, Beckham, Bridge, Barry, Lampard.

Having qualified for the World Cup Finals in South Africa, you may remember Frank Lampard's disallowed GOAL against the Germans in a knock out tie that we eventually lost 1-4. See this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5QlBHF6ib8

Our group was: USA, Slovenia, Algeria Winning 1 v Slovenia, Drawing 2, Losing 0, 5pts...goals for 2 against 1....blisteringl stuffy impressive. The first World Cup Finals result against Germany in regulation time.  We also made history: It was our biggest margin of defeat in a World Cup Finals and the first defeat in regulation time against Germany. So it was well worth it.

Germany went on to beat Argentina 4-0, losing to Spain (the eventual champions beating The Netherlands) 1-0, winning 3rd place v Uruguay 3-2.