After the match yesterday, I requested to do Tine's singles. I know I'm predictable, feel free to fake surprise, but mopping the last match of her career was just too exciting to pass up on.
The line judges were due to have a briefing at 10:15, and so we arrived at a similar time. I would say that this was because we were super time-aware-moppers, but it was really just because we wanted to make the most of their 10KG supply of chocolate buttons. I'm only joking. Or maybe I'm not.
For finals, someone had also come up with the idea of the Field of Play team marching out onto court in synch with each other, and to the beat of the music. Complete with opposite-arm-and-leg-swinging-coordination. We spent a lot of time in the line-up trying to find out how to make it work (well, the line judges did anyway- I was the short one chosen to keep looking under the scaffolding of the knock-up court to check the warm-up progress of the players, and thus the time left for us to master the walking technique), but coordination was just not really happening for us. That said, though, we did attempt it, but due to the technicalities of trying to look directly ahead, whilst simultaneously negotiating a spinning door and having to check the floor for the white-tape-of-trip-hazard-potential, and having to maintain a completely straight face, whilst clearly having the marching ability of the Dad's Army platoon, we seemed to abandon the idea shortly after taking a few steps.
I was quite surprised by the number of supposed Thai supporters in the crowd, although I suspect that they were actually the Chinese fans, and there was a minor case of Europe vs. Asia going on. We were talking earlier in the week about how loud this tournament has been, even in comparison with the Olympics (where there seemed to be a lot of polite clapping from non-badminton-playing-Brits going on) and, considering that there were no Brits left in after Thursday, the noise was pretty impressive!
As Tine's win was pretty exciting, her coach told me after the match that she would take a while in media, but that she would be come to meet me when she had finished, so I sat on a random roll of carpet in the Back of House and waited, whilst trying very hard to work out the score of the men's singles final from how loud the cheering was. In the end I had worked out a fairly reliable technique: very loud cheers were for Chen Long's points, very loud cheers and a few chants were for Lee Chong Wei's points. This didn't always work, though, so my dad resorted to BBMing me the score from his computer. It was at some point during this BBM session that I looked up and realised that there was actually a livescore board directly in front of me...
Tine, it was an honour.