Congrats dicko. Best wishes to you for the grand final.
Thanks rava
29/8/06
Football training
Warm up
Short skills
Long skills
Still pretty sore for this session. My right foot got stood on during the game on Sunday so I couldn’t kick with it at all, a bit of a bugger seeing as it’s my preferred foot. As a result my skills were a bit of a mixed bag. The session was light though, Thursday will be our longer one this week and then freshen up for the big one.
I’ll be doing plenty of icing my foot trying to get it right for Thursday.
31/8/2006
Football training
Warm up
Short skills
Running - 10*60m strides with jog recovery, 8 shuttles with 20 secs recovery
Long Skills
Our last big session before the GF, funnily enough 10 days out. Hopefully we can taper properly now. Everything went well during the session although my right foot is still sore, I managed a couple of kicks on it and my left foot kicking was good anyway. Training Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday next week. They should all be fairly light sessions and Sunday week can’t come soon enough.
3/9/06
Football training
Warm up
Short skills
Long skills
Pretty short but intense session before we went to watch the Preliminary final to see who we play next week. The feeling from everyone was that it was one of our best sessions for the year. I had a few more kicks on my right foot and it’s coming along ok.
The Preliminary final was interesting to say the least. The team we beat last week got off to a shocking start, 10 goals behind in the 2nd quarter before coming back to be only 3 goals down at half time. The third quarter saw a big brawl erupt with a player from each team sent off. The last quarter was a bit of a slog but eventually the team we played last week got up and will be our opponents in the GF. The player I will play on next week kicked 9 goals so I have a big job to do. He played well against me last week as well, so I will need to have a good strategy to beat him.
5/9/06
Football training
Warm up
Short Skills
Long skills
Short and sharp session, our 2nd last for the season. Once again the feeling was great and everyone was moving well. We had a short meeting afterwards to discuss a bit of strategy. We’ll go more into the specific matchups on Thursday after the team has been announced.
On Monday I was named at Centre Half Back and Captain of the team of the year in my league. It’s the 4th year in a row I’ve been named in the team and the 1st as Captain. More looking forward to Sunday and being Premiership captain again though.
7/9/06
Football training
Warm up
Short skills
Long skills
Final training session for the season. Very short and sharp, the boys were all pumped. We made a few skill errors due to our intensity but we made it a good session regardless. After training we had a guest speaker, former North Melbourne premiership player and current coach, Dean Laidley. He spoke about keeping it simple and concentrating on the same things we have all season. Basically if everyone performs the same jobs they have all season we’ll get the win.
It’s going to be huge, can’t wait for Sunday.
10/9/06
Grand Final - Won by 73 points
The game was over as a contest at 1/4 time after we kicked 5 goals to 1, kicking against the breeze. Pretty much every player won his position including myself, I held my opponent to no goals and minimal impact after he kicked 9 the week before. He was taken from the ground in the 3rd quarter and didn’t come back, might have had a slight injury but I’m not to sure cos he jogged off ok. I took 2 marks from opposition kicks and the only part of my game that was a let down was my kicking. It’s been fairly ordinary all year for some reason so I’ll be working on that over summer.
Our celebrations have been long and hard, didn’t get to bed until 4am on Tuesday morning after playing on Sunday. Have only returned to work this morning and will continue to celebrate on the weekend.