Game day - the best day of the week!!

Game days are long mornings/afternoons waiting for the game time, you walk around the city trying to kill some time. If you are lucky, you might have few moments before the game to grab dinner. Although the way games start, this usually is a long shot - more than likely you'll just grab something to eat when/where you can.

Spending time on the computer going through old files is also quite a normal way to spend an afternoon, sometimes you find old pictures that you've all forgotten about.. at times they remind you that perhaps you weren't quite as good a photographer in the beginning of your career than you thought :-)

Today was a good day to walk around town, light snow falling, plenty of cows (not live ones) to look at, little walk along the harbour.. yes, I could get used to this. Then back to the Guest House, five hours until tip-off at the Arena. Check Email, FB, Twitter.. there seems to be numerous requests from Finland to take pictures of the BK Ventspils Cheerleaders?? This usually means an extra 700-800 views on the Blog post (if I post the images).

The game - what can one say about it, good first 15 minutes - but then the tune changed. Kataja were in control of the game (IMHO) but with the gap hovering a 7 points, they failed to capitalise on the poor shooting of the home team and the led stayed at 7 until the half-time.. where a bigger lead was on offer.

ToikkaLatvia

Coming back to the game Donald Sims hit huge three pointers and soon the game had turned from +7 to -7 for the visitors. Kataja failing to hit the mark during the third quarter - the game slipped away from them.. and in the end it was disappointed faces all around.. as it was a winnable game. But at the same time Medias defeated Karsiyaka - leaving Kataja a door open to the last 8. With two home games to come - it is still all wide open in the group.

For me - it is a 1am departure from the Guest House, 3 hour drive to the airport to catch and early flight back to UK - and tomorrow afternoon (weather permitting) I have a University Football game to cover... no rest for the photographer!

And as we post this, it is Riga Airport for me - Guest House owners were extremely nice and stayed up until 1am when I was departing and even prepared me breakfast, so I got a nice meal before starting the drive to the airport. Crazy fog on the way as temperatures slid between 0 and -11 and tons of deer on the roadside so it was a slow journey with a banging migrane to go with it as well.

Big thank you to Karjalainen and Kataja for having me along on this EuroChallenge adventure - it has been great being a part of this journey and witness the games in Romania, Cyprus, Turkey, Romania (again) and Latvia. Been great talking to the players and staff - I will be in touch with all those who've asked for pictures of themselves from these games.

Some of you I will hopefully see during the summer - and others... well, if you come and play on the continent, don't be surprised if you see a familiar face waiting for you when you arrive to some long forgotten town in the middle of nowhere :-)

For now - one journey is at an end...or is it ????....