So that happened... Nobody want to talk about it?!

paulo187 wrote: Phiba posted elsewhere about the loss, acknowledging that it happened. Personally I wasn't watching at the time so can't comment and haven't bothered reading through the game report either. Good thing we're already qualified I guess!

Did he? Didn't notice the post. Weird result.

I mentioned it briefly in the NT forum.

It was a bit of a head scratcher as McMillian had 64% completion rate and all off/def players had high start and end ratings.

We just didn't seem to be able to stop Portugal from scoring. Also Leonard seemed to have a below par day (we've been leaning on him heavily recently).

Unfortunate result but we've had some poor performances in the last couple of weeks and still won so I think it's just one of those things. We have qualified and will be 1st if we beat Slovakia next week. If we were to lose and France win out then we could still finish 1st as we're approx +60 on PD over France.

Will do a proper match report later.


Edit: Match report will be up beginning of next week as I won't have time to do it today.

Couldn't watch the game live yesterday as I was at a Funeral and Wake.

I've had a brief read of the match report and it looks like we were in control throughout. I'm pleased we ended the campaign with a win and 1st in the group. Shame we couldn't go unbeaten though. Still need to do a match report for the Portugal game. Leonard has been pretty quiet the last couple of weeks so hopefully he's just saving himself for the World Cup.

I didn't get a chance to do proper match reports for the last 2 qualifying games. Now that the qualifiers are over and the world cup is about to begin it seems a bit pointless. However, I will do a quick recap.

Week 8 - 20.03.15
UK 49 Portugal 59

The UK's first loss in the qualifiers. This was an unexpected result and looking at the match ratings all of the UK players seemed to have performed well, nearly all players had 5* start/end ratings. McMillian had a great completion percentage (64%) but Leonard didn't have a great game (14 receptions from 23 targets) which hindered the offense. Portugal led all the way through the game and defensively the UK didn't do a lot. They just couldn't stop the Portuguese from scoring. Lucky qualification was already secured but it would've been nice to have gone into the world cup undefeated.

Week 9 - 27.03.15
Slovakia 42 UK 49

The UK had to rely on a 4th quarter comeback and a TD in OT to win the in the first game against Slovakia. This was another close game but a strong 2nd quarter performance put the UK in the lead and they kept that lead for the rest of the game. Leonard scored 4 TDs but only recorded 159 yards, he also dropped a lot of passes (10 receptions from 21 targets). The defense was much stronger than in the defeat to Portugal with both Cunningham (LB) and O'Sullivan (SF) picking up the Slovakian QB.

The UK had a bye in week 10, which was an exciting week for the rest of group F. France lost to Portugal meaning they were behind them by 1 point in PD and could not qualify. Later in the day Slovakia beat Colombia by 45 points which gave them 2nd place with a superior PD over Portugal.

The UK team checked into their hotel in Denmark today and are looking forward to their first match tomorrow