Alright, so I got back early this morning from Edmonton and watching the Mexico/New Zealand and Canada/Congo games live! Man that was fun.
First, Edmonton. That was without question the worst organization I have ever experienced when going to an event.
This was their logical reasoning:
There is a large event taking place at the Stadium. Therefore, lots of people will be trying to get there.
Excellent. Well then, lets
close the road to the stadium. Call it whatever you want (it has about 3 different names before it turns into 'Stadium Road') is
closed.
If this wasnt bad enough, they had a Police Officer directing traffic at a perfectly functioning intersection, in front of said closed road. He then
interviewed every individual driver and asked them where they were going. We are on Stadium Road, take a wild guess.
Idiocy Round 2. Police Officer asks whether we have parking passes. No, we're just going to pay for Stadium Parking (just like we all do when we go to the dome or McMahon). Cant do that. Have to have a parking pass (ie. Eskimos Season tickets).
Go down an adjoining avenue and find your own parking spot. If you've ever been to Commonwealth Stadium (and its a nice venue) then you would know its sort of in a quasi-urban residential area. Small shops interspersed with neighborhoods and apartment buldings. Which all have big
"No Parking for Stadium Events" signs. Precisely where the hell are we supposed to park? We finally found a spot, but we had to move the car every two hours, and we were late.
Idiocy Continued. After that, everyone has to walk about 10 minutes to Commonwealth Stadium. No problem.
The entire stadium is surrounded by empty parking lots that are closed and the road around it is closed. So everyone in attendance could easily have parked in the Stadium lots, but no, they are for parking passes only, so they were completely empty. Why?
By this time I'm fairly pissed off. I've missed the first 15 minutes of the game because we've been screwing around with this parking situation.
The Games.
First of all I'd like to say, that for some odd reason Canadian fans cannot bring the enthusiasm and noise making ability that we have at hockey games to that stadium. It might be because it wasnt nearly at its capacity, but the
Mexican and Congo fans were absolutely AWESOME! They brought drums and they marched around the entire building chanting, it was a really great atmosphere. We still had a loud cheer going on though, it was a lot of fun, and all the Canadian fans were out there in the pouring rain screaming and cheering, but you just could barely hear them over the really small but loud Congo contingent. I think it must have been because of the drums....
The Canada game was really unfortunate, we had all sorts of chances but just couldnt get that finishing touch, really, they could have easily won that game if a couple touches had gone the other way. The biggest prolem was they got y with all the posession and pushed their defense up to press the attack. Then Congo punished them on the counter-attack. Both Congo goals came on really good break out moves, they were fast and skilled and the defense couldnt get back in time. Really, really unfortunate for the Canadians.
By the way, I havent seen the televised broadcast of that game, but if any of you saw it, I was the soaking wet guy in the 8th row (Great Seats) drinking beer and wearing my Calgary Flames Jersey, as the only red clothes I own are all Flames-related, so I figured as a Canadian, the hockey jersey just seemed fitting.
Locke.