I am pleased to say that my first pre-season campaign as a Collingwood Football Club player is behind me and the 2011 football season here in Australia has finally arrived.
It has been a long, demanding pre-season campaign since all the players came together last November to start training, but I have thoroughly enjoyed it.
I have had to adapt to the vastly different training loads. Here we train five days a week, and on main training days we’d arrive at the club at 8am and leave at around 3 or 4pm. During that time we’d spend a couple of hours out on our training field doing drills and aerobic work, then we’ll have a couple of meetings, lift weights, and perhaps do some additional fitness/skill work inside our training facility - the Westpac Centre. It’s very tiring, and I’ve been doing a lot of sleeping, particularly in the afternoon when I get home.
When I first came over I was 77 kilograms, now I’m up around 84 or 85, which is good. When we had our first two-kilometre time trial at the start of pre-season, I wanted to display my endurance, so I set myself to win it and I did which was pleasing.
Watching players like Scott Pendlebury, Harry O’Brien and Luke Ball train has inspired me to work as hard as I possibly can. It’s no wonder those guys are stars of the AFL, given how hard they train and how professional they are.
Collingwood won its first premiership in 20 years last season, and so coming to the best club in the country and training with some of the competition’s elite players was certainly daunting. But the club has been extremely welcoming and professional, and I can see why they’ve had the success they’ve had, and why we are favourites to win the AFL premiership in 2011.
Boarding that plane last October brought about a number of emotions. I was excited, nervous, a little bit scared even, and asked myself on more than one occasion if I’d made the right call leaving my family and friends, and also the GAA, Johnstown Bridge and County Kildare.
While I miss home, and always will for as long as I’m gone, I am very satisfied with the decision I made to give Australian rules football a go, and I’m extremely excited about finally playing some home-and-away season games for Collingwood’s VFL (Victorian Football League) team, which is effectively our reserves side.
One hard aspect of making the move to Australia is coping with the cultural transition. Ireland and Australia are similar in many ways, but also extremely different. Sometimes I struggle to understand the Aussie accent, and often Aussies look at me like I’m speaking Chinese. There is some local slang that makes no sense to me at all, like ‘fair dinkum’, and they say ‘mate’ a lot. I’m amazed by how many tattoos there are here at the club. I’m out of place not having a tattoo. Dane Swan, Dayne Beams and Travis Cloke have some extensive and impressive artwork, while Harry O’Brien and Brad Dick are also well covered.
Having just come out of the Australian summer, I am definitely looking forward to some cooler weather. The summer heat here is intense, and my pale Irish skin didn’t enjoy it all that much. I’m still trying to come to terms with this strange Aussie favourite called ‘Vegemite’. How people can spread it on their toast is beyond me. I also miss my mother’s quality cooking. My kitchen skills are improving but I have a long way to go.
When I originally came to Melbourne, I moved into a house with a host family in the inner-city suburb of Richmond. They were really accommodating and that was a good experience. Since then I have moved in with some fellow young players - Luke Rounds, Lachlan Keeffe, Tom Young and Josh Thomas. We are living at a house in Surrey Hills owned by Alan Didak, who is one of our club’s superstar players.
Alan comes around occasionally to check on his house and to see how we’re doing, so we make sure the place is taken care of. Luke Rounds is certainly the tidiest, but I’d have to say myself and Lachlan Keeffe are the most talented in the kitchen. My favourite dish is chicken and pasta - great to keep the carbohydrate and protein levels up. Overall it’s going really well living with the boys. We keep each other motivated and share transportation duties. Hopefully we can all play in the senior team together - that would be amazing.
It’s been an incredible six months since pre-season training started. Now it’s time to translate all the hard work into match day performances.
