June 27th 2010
First morning at the university, we’ve officially met the whole team and we’ve also had our first training session as a team. Apparently it was a ‘light’ training session, which in other words to Aussies would be a normal Canadian training session. After training we had to do a 3.2km (2mile) time trial which was a bundle of fun. After a dinner of spaghetti and meat sauce we went to the common room of the college and did a team bonding session with a team bonding leader named Alea. It’s officially the beginning of the World XVIII coming together as one team.
June 28th 2010
Today we had a 7:00 o’clock wake-up, breakfast was at 7:30, good old cereal and toasts with some hard boiled eggs. At nine we had a team meeting, coach Michael O’Loughlin took us through our team rules; beat your opponent, use the ball, play for the team, and most importantly, Compete. Training started after the meeting, we played on the artificial hockey fields because the footy field was recovering from the rain. Coach took us through some drills, basic lanework, mad ball, a drill where you are covering a man and trying to prevent him from getting the ball while they are running around to different stations trying to get the ball, it was tiring.
Greg Everett, our team runner, took us to the pool for a recovery session, it was more than helpful. We ate lunch and then went to the National Sports Museum, which was in the MCG stadium. There was an interactive part to the museum, and for sure the best part, where there was a place to simulate goal kicking, hand-balling, and other random sports. We then got an inside tour of MCG, we saw the changing rooms, the box seats, the newspaper and radio rooms. After that, was dinner and then a small team meeting and then sleep.
June 29th 2010
Today we had our first practice match against South Pacific. Not many people were very optimistic about how the game would go, but when it was underway we realized we could compete. We were competing and fighting for the ball and it was just a real team effort. Our team wanted to give em a run for their money. We lost only by a couple goals, but if the team just comes together some more we can tune our skills and actually have a good crack at beating the boys.
Afterwards we went and had dinner, and met Shae McNamara of the Collingwood F.C, who is an American who chased his dream and sent the club a video of himself doing skill work. His playing with the VFL side at the moment. He told us his story of how he came about into footy, and now he’s playing some good footy. He had a choice between a basketball career, and a footy one, and he chose the footy. He’s been watching games all the time and just trying to do what the big players are doing and such. Pretty inspiring story alright since he’d never touched a footy till seven months ago.
Last Modified on 01/07/2010 08:37