{"id":48,"date":"2002-05-21T17:55:00","date_gmt":"2002-05-21T16:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/blog\/?p=48"},"modified":"2012-12-13T12:33:09","modified_gmt":"2012-12-13T12:33:09","slug":"as-the-england-team-depletes-we-pray-the-xiahe-tibetan-monks-play-clean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/blog\/2002\/05\/21\/as-the-england-team-depletes-we-pray-the-xiahe-tibetan-monks-play-clean\/","title":{"rendered":"As the England team depletes, we pray the Xiahe Tibetan monks play clean"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/theball.tv\/common\/images\/2002\/china\/xiahe\/monks_boots.jpg\" alt=\"Young monks prostrate themselves in football boots\" style=\"width: 320px;height: 240px\" \/><br \/>\nHere at the Labrang Monastery the young monks dig football<\/p>\n<p>Gutting news about Dyer and Gerrard being added to the injured list, but we&#8217;re keeping our boots polished and training hard with some Tibetan monks tomorrow and Dalai Lama knows who the day after that. So, Sven, once we&#8217;ve delivered our ball to the Opening ceremony we&#8217;re all yours.<\/p>\n<div class=\"sofvm_embed alignnone\"><div class=\"sofvm_video\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Arrival in Xiahe\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/g1bJqmbhF18?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n\n<p>First impressions as The Ball arrives at the famous Tibetan monastery.<\/p>\n<div class=\"sofvm_video_post_link\"><p><a href=\"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/videos\/arrival-in-xiahe\/#respond\">Comment on this video<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/theball.tv\/common\/images\/2002\/china\/xiahe\/ball_and_prayerwheels.jpg\" alt=\"The Ball prays for Peace\" style=\"width: 320px;height: 240px\" \/><br \/>\nThe ball takes a trip down the prayer wheels<\/p>\n<p>As the sun went down and our third moon rose this evening I played a beautiful game in a Yak enclosure. Yak pats, dust (again) and rocks for goalposts (again) set this scene.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/theball.tv\/common\/images\/2002\/china\/xiahe\/yak.jpg\" alt=\"Yaks leaving the pitch\" style=\"width: 320px;height: 240px\" \/><br \/>\nYaks chased from their enclosure making way for Football<\/p>\n<p>More on this tomorrow and a development of the <a href=\"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/blog\/2002\/05\/13\/ugygurs-v-the-rest-of-the-world-in-niye\/\">desert story<\/a> (containing news of the finest goal of the trip so far. Quite liderally an er&#8230; heavenly strike mate&#8230; wasn&#8217;t it, isn&#8217;t it&#8230; er&#8230; gotta love football&#8230;. don&#8217;t like to talk about it much&#8230; um&#8230;do I?)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/theball.tv\/common\/images\/2002\/china\/xiahe\/monks_boots.jpg\" alt=\"Young monks prostrate themselves in football boots\" style=\"width: 320px;height: 240px\" \/><br \/>\nHere at the Labrang Monastery the young monks dig football<\/p>\n<p>Gutting news about Dyer and Gerrard being added to the injured list, but we&#8217;re keeping our boots polished and training hard with some Tibetan monks tomorrow and Dalai Lama knows who the day after that. So, Sven, once we&#8217;ve delivered our ball to the Opening ceremony we&#8217;re all yours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china"],"geo":{"latitude":35.19655230000000045720298658125102519989013671875,"longitude":102.512153600000004871617420576512813568115234375,"description":null},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":720,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions\/720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2002\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}