A Long Weekend

I am back in Germany in the sunshine after a very long weekend. I am going to try and give a picture commentary….writing is too difficult as I still can’t move my arms. We had AVL finals last weekend. We started off with a danger game against QLD. We won in 4 and played some of the best volleyball we had in a while.

someone needs to teach me how to defend the line apparently…

This bought us to the next round, we had to beat SA to get through to the final. They shocked us big time in the first two sets and completely demolished us and our game plan playing the smoothest volleyball they have all season. We got our shit together halfway through the third, almost left it too late and won a thriller in 5. It was without a doubt the biggest come back I have played in, and one of the most exciting. It was great to win, and you can see from the celebration reaction in this last picture!

I take full credit for the lack of block right here!

biggest comeback of my career….biggest celebration too as you can see. massive pity we didn’t follow it up.

So we were in the final….one the first, lost the second, won the third, lost the fourth and lost the fifth in a tight one. I don’t really want to talk too much about the match. Too much went on and the loss still hurts a bit. Heres some pics.

Hynes going bang… 

not overly happy in this one… 

Before I move on I want to make two special mentions from this weekend. Tarsh…who played the best volleyball I have ever seen from her…absolute killer on the slide attack. Watch out for Karly Hynes…massive young talent with a volleyball brain and power, hard to beat.

You would think the weekend would be over, thoroughly exhausted by now however it was far from over. We had an extremely tough camp, great for team building and a good lead up for the comps to come. I still can’t move my arms from some of it, they feel like straw. It was good to get together with the squad, a lot of who I have never played with or trained with before…Sam Simmonds being one of these, plays in the States and unfortunately for South Australia, was good to set some balls to her and touch base. Good to finally get everyone together.

Sammy getting tooled for sure…

I arrived in Germany with Rhi, it’s 31 degrees today, we rode on a boatcycle (our name for it, unsure of the German trasnlation) and strolled around. Tomorrow more strolling, brekky at a nice cafe, maybe head to the pool and the gym, and catch up with some of the team tomorrow night. Training starts Monday.

on the boat cycle….chasing some ducks…catching some rays. Day 1 done!