Hello everyone, it’s great to be writing to you in a week when we got a re-start date for the Hyundai A-League and returned to training!
I’m so pleased to be training again after a long period and to be back with the boys.
You miss the day to day interaction and banter and it’s great to be doing what we love, which is playing football.
The first two days haven’t been too hard – they’ve gone easy on us – and everyone looks in good shape.
We do have a lot of hard work ahead of us though, and we are all looking forward to it.
On Monday we all had to go through the Covid-19 testing, and I thought it was going to be a lot worse.
I had heard some stories about how bad it was and while it certainly wasn’t a pleasant experience – it felt like someone was picking your brain at one point – it wasn’t too bad.
We did a few medical things and ticked a few more boxes on Tuesday, then we were able to all train together on Wednesday for the first time.
Everyone has come back just the same and in good spirits after three months without seeing each other. We are very lucky that our job is something fun and that we enjoy.
We started Wednesday with one group doing a circuit training session with the ball and another group doing a passing drill. It allowed us to do fitness work in a non-contact sense, as well as getting a feel for the ball again.
Today was more of a game situation spread over a large area to include ball work and fitness at the same time but no tackling or contact just yet.
We also found out our first game will be against Wellington Phoenix on July 17th and I think it’s the perfect first game to have.
We’ve got four weeks to prepare and a win in that game near enough sews up the Premiers Plate for us.
It means we can focus on them and putting in a good performance, knowing we can wrap it up, so it’s exciting to be playing them first.
The potential to have Members back in the ground is exciting too. We experienced the game against Western Sydney Wanderers in an empty stadium and it was nowhere near what it should have been.
So the possibility of having Members back in the stand, even a limited number to watch us go for the double would be fantastic.
Those things are still to be confirmed and we wait to see but I’m glad we are talking about the football games again.
