Betfair send off and aspirations for the games

By Andre Charles-Foster | 27 July 2007

After a short trip into London, I arrived at the Betfair building not knowing what to expect. What I found were three athletes who had beaten me there and a table full of wine with a few soft drinks, which I thought was strange considering that this was the arranged meeting place for the ‘athletes’ for the games. I would later find out why alcohol was there. A short wait was followed by Steve Backley and Paul Dickenson’s appearance. Steve was taller than I had imagined and Paul’s voice was recognisable from his commentary on television. Once the rest of the TASS athletes had arrived everyone gathered into the hall for speeches from the two guests of honour and the MD of Betfair. Pictures and hand food followed this. All in all an interesting and insightful evening with free food and free clothes (they do know how to attract students).

My aspiration for the team (men’s football) and myself is to win and become universidade champions, and have a gold medal; however this is 6 games and 20 days away. So the immediate aspirations would be for a safe and happy journey, to settle in quickly, and get used to each other and the way we play as quickly as possible through training. Then it will be a case of concentrating on the immediate game that is to be played, which is a cliché but is a cliché that must be followed.

Finally my wish for all my GBR teammates is one of success, if not winning then achieving your PB’s. Good luck and see you soon. To Betfair thank you for your support, it is very much appreciated and to those at home I hope you have enjoyed the blog, the next time you will here from me will be in Thailand.

Andre

Read all blog posts