With the first Home & Away match rapidly approaching and all focus on that, a glance back over the pre-season months emerges as a bit of a blur. Something that stood out for the women’s squad over February/March was a solid commitment to training from both senior veterans and newcomers to the club. There was a short adjustment period as the club got used to using the new temporary digs at Fellows. There were the obligatory time trials and sprints that are not always popular with players but could always feature more. We also spent a bit of time getting the body used to contact again. Perhaps the sharpest adjustment (not surprisingly) was for those who found themselves kicking a Sherrin for the first time ever this year. Well done to those guys in particular for taking on that challenge while absorbing all the other intricacies of footy.
The time came for practice matches, of which we had two. A few weeks back we took on Gunghalin (a Div 1 team) at Amaroo, the same day the men’s had an intra-club. It was wet and windy out there but the women made it look easy attacking the ball at pace and kicking long to space. I think everyone had a go at a few different spots that day and there were so many stand outs. We didn’t really keep score as it was a scratchy with 6 x 10 minute quarters. Really positive signs for the team to gel in their first hit-out together.
Just this Sunday past we had our second practice match against Ainslie (another team in the Division above us). This time the conditions were far hotter so there were a lot of tired bodies by the time the final siren blew. It was 16 a side at one stage and we only had the luxury of one bench player to their 5 so it was a huge effort to come away with a 7 goal to 3 score line.
So to summarise, we punched above our weight this pre-season by taking on the teams in the higher tier but we really need to get more training and game time into everyone on the list. That means a further commitment to that already made if we are to make a serious tilt at the Division flag this season.
Last Modified on 16/10/2014 15:18