As anyone would know who has read my World Cup Blogs before or ever attended a World Cup Tournament as a fan of football, the group stages are a gruelling marathon of endless football games following on one after another, after another, until you almost can’t remember what you have seen, when you saw it or where... Well, we are back in the thick of it again, scheduling our time around matches we are attending, games we want to see on TV, and the
occasional meal or two, and personally, I love it... I don’t love the ever-increasing tiredness or the semi-arduous treks out to the stadiums, or the boring 1-nil games from teams that should do better, I love that, for 6 weeks in June & July every 4 years, I am encompassed in the buzz of it all and involved in an event being watched by more than half the population of the world. Obviously the time-off, the travel, and the immersion into a different country, culture & cuisine help fuel the passion, without the high drama that is World Cup football, you could find yourself asking yourself whether it was really worth the hassle....
Over the first week of the World Cup we have attended our first 2 matches at the Saint Petersburg
Stadium; the first a slightly laboured win for Iran over Morocco involving an own goal in the last minute of injury time; the second a magnificent 3-1 victory for the World cup Hosts Russia over Egypt on a cold, wet blustery evening where the only thing keeping us warm was the thrill of the game itself. In between those 2 matches, I have personally seen at least part of every other game except for the 2 games that were being played while we were in
transit to the Stadium, which by my calculation is at least 16 games on TV, so no one can question my dedication when it comes to the World Cup, right? Whilst Yates has been busy with friends & family, Fiona & I have spent some quality time together, between games obviously, and have tried to chill-out as much as possible around this gorgeous city of St.Petersburg. Yates & I did manage one night of debauched drinking when we met a couple of Australians at a bar during the Germany v Mexico game, that became an endless round of vodka shots and verbal abuse, for which I paid handsomely in the hang-over stakes, but other than that it has been quite civilised.
As we enter week two of the tournament there is little relief in sight in the short term... We are off to watch Brazil v Costa Rica tomorrow to be followed by Argentina v Nigeria next Tuesday, and in between those matches we need to be in a position to watch both the England & Germany games and many others coming up over the same period. It’s always like this in the group stages, thank God that it slows down a touch once we get to the knock-out stages, by then we will have transferred to Moscow and have a whole lot of new sightseeing to fill in the gaps between games.
As we enter week two of the tournament there is little relief in sight in the short term... We are off to watch Brazil v Costa Rica tomorrow to be followed by Argentina v Nigeria next Tuesday, and in between those matches we need to be in a position to watch both the England & Germany games and many others coming up over the same period. It’s always like this in the group stages, thank God that it slows down a touch once we get to the knock-out stages, by then we will have transferred to Moscow and have a whole lot of new sightseeing to fill in the gaps between games. 
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