It sounds like the Russians gave the Americans some of their own medicine...
Since I wasn't there (gutted) I'll quote a post from someone else on another post board.
"Now, I think the Russian team needs to work on their anger and playing with less guys. If anyone saw the game, an American bunkered a Russian at the back stand-up, and the Russian then proceeded to LIGHT UP the American, who had the good sportmanship to stay calm and take it. When I say light up, I mean like 20 shots at 5 feet, and the Russian got 5 minutes for that one.
That's when their game started to go downhill, they lost one other player to penalties, then another, and one of their guys came in from the box too early. They played like 1/4 of the games 3 v 5.
I believe that since they practice together a lot, they are used to playing 5 man, and when they only had 3, they really couldn't coordinate. The U.S. team was hand-picked and thus they knew how to work independently and probably prepared for it. But man, the U.S. WOMPED when the Russians played down, and the Americans won most of their games when they had the advantage.
All I watched was X-ball, and let me say it's rather spectator-friendly. I watched one regular game, but the refs were so bad and deaf, and one player wiped, so I just went back to X-ball"
It sounds like X-ball was a huge success... they are already talkingn about running more pro events this way...
I'm gutted about the Englands results. Couldn't you have just dragged in spectators to help with the pit crew work? I'm guessing that's what you did when playing the Russian team the next day?
manike