Scarborough Eagles

Well training is fully underway as we have just completed our second week of pre-season. The training hasn't been overly difficult and my running has paid off as I find myself keeping pace with the squad. We practice every Tuesday and Thursday night for about an hour and a half to two hours, depending on the level of intensity and effort during the session. It's extremely different than playing at home as everyone is here determined to work very to become a better player. At home, the players wanted to work, but weren't nearly as intense as over here. I am thoroughly enjoying every minute of footy here.

So far we've had about 75 different players turn up to practice with an average of 55 players each training; another huge change from home as Milwaukee would struggle to get 20 different players in a two week span. These numbers are great for the club as each club is comprimsed of a few different teams. Each player is selected for the team that best fits their level of ability. Scarborough has four different teams...I think. There is the Main team, the Reserves, then 2nds, and 3rds. No player has a set team that they play on as each squad is selected on Thursday nights after practice. For instance (since participation is strictly voluntary), if a player on the Main team can't make a game, a player will move up from the Reserves to fill in; If a player's game goes down the toilet, that player will move down and another player will be moved up. Pretty simple, but it makes a person work much harder to maintain or elevate their level of skill.

As for myself, being American, my skills are behind the curve. In talking with Jared (the other Milwaukee player on Scarborough who has already been here a year), he and his brother struggled their first year with their skills, so it's to be expected. I know he's right, but it's still frustrating. Currently I'm working on mastering the correct kicking form. Back home I had a pretty good kick, but my form was very wrong. I try to kick just about every day to get used to the correct drop and form. It's frustrating because I'm so used to controlling a basketball and having the ability to palm the ball and place it where I desire; Here the correct drop isn't supposed to be held at all, but rather just guided to the correct position. Very awkward as I feel like I have no control. But still, it is coming along as I feel myself getting better every day.

The level of fitness and intensity is also a major change from back home. My normal training would be 4-5 mile runs and 50, 50 yard sprints alternating every day. Here, the training is much different as it's a combination of a number of different things. On Tuesday we started off with a cardio session, a half mile jog down to the beach, and spent the remainder of the time doing beach running. The end of the beach portion was spent doing an iron-man type work out in groups of five. Here is the synopsis; Run down the beach (20 yards) into the water, swim out about 30 yards, swim back in and run up the beach, run on the soft sand along the water for 35 yards, complete that two more times, and then finish with a 105 yard sprint in the soft sand back to the start. Not fun at all, but we still had a half mile-sprint back to the main training ground. I feel like I'm in better shape than I ever was last year.

Tonight Jared, a few other players, and myself are running Jacob's Ladder in Kings Park. As part of our training, our coach Mark Horn is requiring different fitness tests to evaluate if we're getting more fit or not. One test is Jacob's Ladder, which is a set of stairs in the main park in downtown Perth (like Central Park is to New York). The Ladder has roughly 300 steps and we have to run it six times and clock ourselves; that's about 1800 steps, or about 300 steps less than the Sears Tower Run in Chicago. This should be interesting.