Fri 09 Sep 2007Hickie not giving up just yetWhen players gaze over their shoulders after this World Cup is
completed, they will look back on a competition that was laced with
large snakes ready to gulp them down and well-placed ladders
offering to lift them back up. For many it has been a roll of the
dice.On the pitch as well as off it, France will live in players'
minds for the emotional blizzards that raged around the corridors
of the Sofitel Hotel in Bordeaux and Paris, the exasperating
letdowns and the giddy hopes of being reselected when things looked
as though they could get no worse.