Archive for June 2010
Amy -tackling- , Alex and Amanda
I was the only openside flanker in the championship division at Nationals to miss out on the Wallaroo Training Squad. Ouch. Being a curious creature and wanting to understand where I need to improve, I decided to check out my match stats, starting with the ACT trial match against Sydney on 16 April.
If interested, you can check out the video highlights from the game.
I looked at myself (obviously), Alex Hargreaves – incumbent Wallaroo #7 but playing #8 for ACT – and Amy Robertson, the Sydney #7. Note that I’ve only counted material contributions, ie hanging onto a ruck is not counted as an involvement.
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CrossFit with a focus on Rugby
CrossFit gives you a set of functional movements, often combined into rounds, that taxes various components of fitness. From what I can see, the emphasis is on strength and power endurance, some strength and power development and some anaerobic endurance. Each WOD is roughly 30 – 60mins.
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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gkvk6VAvllw
I found an old clip from 2007, my second game as openside flanker, and it features a lot of the usual suspects.
The clip is from the ACT women’s grand final between Royals and Vikings. I played for Royals that year, and was moved from flyhalf to flanker for the finals series. I did my best George Smith impersonation, although it must be said it’s unlikely an objective observer would have known that’s what I was doing, haha…
And things have changed a little since then. I’m now playing for the Vikings in the backrow. The referee in the clip is Drew Crozier, and he is the one who really convinced me to play in the backrow fulltime when he took over as the ASCT Women’s coach last year. He seems to have lost both weight and hair since 2007 
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Will tackle anything that moves...
Sadly, though, our club game last weekend was postponed and there is a competition bye this weekend, which means I have another week to wait before I can play rugby again.
So if anyone out there needs a backrower this weekend, give me a yell.
Driving forward against Sydney
First and foremost, there’s no doubt that this has been my best season. All the hard work I put in paid off with good form on the field and I think I learnt how to prepare myself for games. But runs-on-the-board-wise, Nationals was a shocker.
If you want an on-the-ball 7 who can tackle, pilfer, counter-ruck, clean-out and pressure the opposition’s flyhalf, that’s me. And God help the runner if they turn the ball back on the inside. I’m not a ball runner, particularly, but I do like to run support lines for the outside backs and for the more creative backrowers like Alex and Pip. And I can utilise any space I find myself in.
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I'm at the bottom, grey headgear.
We didn’t reach our expectations. The week was extraordinary and in the end, the result was three bitter losses.
Okay, so the competition was good. But as the Queensland coach said to Drew after our first match, we really should have won. It’s difficult to account for what happened; the easy answer is lack of experience, lack of composure. Well, we certainly lacked composure.
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2010 Brumbies Women. I'm front left.
Tomorrow morning, I’ll join the ACT Brumbies in camp for the 2010 National Championships. The plan is to take it out.
The best girl ruggers in Oz are headed to Canberra this weekend for the National Women’s Championships. Given this is also the last chance to press a claim for selection in the Wallaroos World Cup squad, my bet is there’ll be plenty of intense rugby in store.
This year, there are two divisions which will be contested in round robin format. So no final, but as in previous years, you’ll really have to win all your games if you want the title.
Here’s a preview of what we might expect to see from the Championship division (QLD, Sydney, ACT and NSW Country:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WtBn36vsfM
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