Aalborg...not in Aalborg for once.

It takes a solid 2.5 hours to drive to Aalborg from Odense. It's a drive that we've already had the pleasure of making a couple of times this year. And conceivably could be making two more times before the season is over.

Luckily, this weekend we got to play them at home.

I don't know if it was the unusual green floor in Hal 2, the setter change, the recent pokal title or the impending team Christmas dinner, but something had us playing well below our normal standard. To me it looked like the guys weren't really that motivated - there was little excitement or urgency in the things we were doing. We gave points away too easily and didn't do enough to score when we needed it. At the same time, for most of the first set we were close enough so as to not be too worried. It wasn't until late that Aalborg put together a run and pulled away from us. Unfortunately, no one looked very worried about losing the set.

The second opened where it ended, with Aalborg scoring points. At some point, the score was 5 or 6 to 1 and things looked bleak for us. But, here the game changed drastically. I think more than anything, we decided to inject a little more effort and emotion into our play and that, in turn, put more pressure on Aalborg. As the score indicates, after their early lead in the second set we essentially played them off the court. 74-45 speaks for itself.

I can't speak from their perspective, but I would definitely say that pressure was the key in the match. As soon as we were able to push them outside of their comfort zone - whether by serving tougher, receiving well against serves that in the first set would have resulted in bad passes or siding out at a much higher rate - they seemed to break down. And significantly, the emotion and fun swung from their side to ours.

Looking forward to at least one more trip up there at the end of the season!

The Christmas dinner afterwards was a success. Very hard to go wrong when you have lots of incredible food, beer, snaps and people. And of course aufguss.

In any case, I got a chance to watch the pokal final again and I have a few comments I'll post in the next couple of days.