Secondary School Sport SA, in conjunction with Touch Football SA, were again represented this year at the School Sport Australia National Championships. With Monash University providing a fantastic site, including newly surfaced fields, it was nice to actually have grass under our feet.

The teams travelled together, and having had a much closer relationship throughout the training campaign than in the past, this set the tone for the trip. With a direct flight from Adelaide to Melbourne, at not too unreasonable a time, both teams were pumped for the weeks competition. After arrival in Melbourne, and a long bus ride from Tullamarine to the accommodation, the players were met by a blast of un-Melbourne-like hot weather.

The good weather didn’t hold for the whole week, however, with rain on most of the competition days. At least the sun was out for the trip to the MCG on the Wednesday, where our lovely tour guide, Brian, provided us with a fun, interesting tour of the famous ground.

Competition was tough on the first day of games. With both boys and girls teams facing the big two - QLD and NSW - it was always going to be hard work. Both teams showed plenty of spirit against well drilled and capable players from the eastern seaboard, with the boys managing a touchdown against their QLD opponents.

The second day of games was much more interesting. With three potentially winnable games against Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia, both teams were eager to win, but were disappointed with their performance in the morning games. The boys in particular looked to have the game in hand, but struggled to keep the Tasmanian boys from scoring enough touchdowns to steal a draw in the dying minutes. The girls came back from this result to resoundingly beat Victoria in their second game of this day, and were finally looking like they had travelled for a reason. However, they ran out of legs in the final game of the day, and couldn’t manage to keep WA’s half runners from finding their targets.

As mentioned previously, after the strenuous second day of competition, the Wednesday was a day of rest, with a trip to the MCG, and then to IMAX cinema for an entertaining, yet still educational movie about Dinosaurs.

The final round games were against “The Territories”, with opportunities to beat both ACT and NT going begging in both games. By this time the strain of the tournament was starting to show on the bodies of the players - whilst the fields had grass on them, they were still hard enough to leave a nasty graze.

The finals were another chance for both teams to play against teams they could have beaten the first time around. Again, whilst at times it looked like both teams could have won their way through to the Plate Final, the girls struggled against a young yet effective Tasmanian team, and the boys were unable to top the NT team. And so it came to the 7v8 playoffs. The SA girls again managed to dispatch the Victorians, with a great captain’s effort by Georgia Brown to score four touchdowns in the one game, and Beth Fairfield almost winding up to top speed to score a couple more. The boys battled valiantly, but again struggled against Tasmania, who outscored them in the second half.

A hard, yet enjoyable week. With mostly first-time players in both teams, some new to touch football altogether, and many being eligible to play again in 15s next year, the trip to Launceston for next year’s tournament promises to be just as much fun. As our state develops and these junior players filter into our senior ranks, you can bet you’ll see plenty of them playing at a high level in the future.

Awards.

Boys.

• Coaches - Tom Starkey
• MVP - Alex Peecock
• Players Player - Billy Macklin

Girls.

• Coaches - Abbey Freer
• MVP - Kelly Rowe
• Players Player - Georgia Brown

You mean they’re going to execute him for yelling a the ref? I thought that’s what “Ultimate Penalty” meant.

ADELAIDE United coach John Kosmina could be forced to watch the A-League grand final from the AFL coaches’ box at Telstra Dome after again falling foul of the FFA’s disciplinary watchdogs after Sunday’s dramatic penalty shoot-out win over the Newcastle Jets.

Oh, that’s what you mean.

I love how journalists overdo it.

My team was a UniSA+others team, organised by Paul Rogers. We managed to remain undefeated until the Grand Final, when the hand-picked “The Drought” team, with all current or ex-state and/or Crusaders players, beat us 3-1.

We had been very strong all day, with the highest score (it’s a 20-minute turnaround game) 10-0, and the best for and against record. We comfortably won the Semi-final against a team from Gawler, but struggled against The Drought.

Thanks to all of my team for a good fun day.

… But when they arrived in Sydney yesterday morning they were told their luggage, in which the cricket tickets were packed, was still in England and would take three days to get here.

So let me get this straight. They didn’t carry their tickets in their hand luggage? That’s just plain stupid! It’s not like tickets are particularly bulky even!

Whenever I take teams touring, they always pack all of the stuff they need for playing in their hand luggage, just in case the airline loses their checked stuff. And it’s a bit harder fitting playing gear and boots into hand luggage than some tickets in a small folder.

They deserve to miss the match.

The first one was Kabaddi. It’s basically chasey, which makes it cool enough. But it’s got some other cool rules, and is truly stunning to watch. Grown men ‘tagging’ one another, and then trying to escape without being pinned by them.

The other was Sepaktakraw. Think of volleyball, but instead of using a large air filled ball, use a small cane one. And instead of hitting the ball with your hands, use your feet. There’s still a high net, and this one is also amazing to watch.

I’m a bit tired to do a proper write-up of what went on, and how we went, but I may do it later. In short, we beat Victoria twice, 4-1 each time, and lost to every other team.

The girls played okay, but I still felt they played a bit below their best. I was pretty disappointed with a couple of the games, but generally had a pretty good time.

The AFL Grand Final was on this weekend, and no Victorian teams were in it (or even got close). This is particularly galling for the Vics, as the AFL used to be the VFL, and until very recently, the Victorian teams were still the powerhouses.

Oh well. It’s all fun and games, isn’t it…

Biscuit o Portishead o Dummy *2*2

However, using IE (Win), if I have a stealth forwarding setup, the site runs v.e.r.y…s.l.o.w. Under Firefox (Mac) it’s fine, and if I use a standard redirect, this is fine too. So, stealth forwarding must do something strange, that IE doesn’t like in conjunction with the js for the rollovers, I think.

It may have something to do with the way it’s set up as a frame, I’m not sure.

This year’s bunch of 10, 11 and 12 year-olds was astounding. It really seems like our state development programs are starting to work out. Each year we seem to have a better group of kids than the years before. Even though there were only just over the 14 that each team takes away, this is better than in recent years where we have had to find extra players. And almost without exception, all of the kids trialling know the rules better than the first group of 15s I took away did. Mind you, those girls are now all over 18, and some of them have played State Women’s Open, and Crusaders 20s, so not taking anything away from all of them.

I wound up running the grids on both days, and helping with the selection of the girls team. I really enjoy working with kids that age, but I think I could only handle so much of it before I tired of the young-ness of them. If you know what I mean.

It was, as I always seem to be saying in my letters out to candidates, very hard to select a team from a pool of talent like this. Having said that, we’ve selected what we deemed to be the 21 best girls from the weekend, and in about a month I’ll be holding further trials, over a couple of weekends.

Following that, there will be a selection of 14 girls to be in the final team, and then training begins in earnest. And then, at the end of October, it’s off to Perth for a week.