Recent Touch Stuff

I spent all day yesterday coaching the Mariners, one of the two South Australian Men’s Open Mitchell Cup teams. The Mitchell cup was a new project run by TouchSA (specifically Tracey Frith), and was intended to provide a better standard of games than the State League competition, as a build up to the State Teams. Selection for Men’s Open and Women’s Open teams, as well as a Mixed Open team was made during the Mitchell Cup, and teams were announced at the Presentation Night. I’ve also been asked to be one of the Assistant Coaches of the SA Men’s Open team. Since some of the training sessions will clash with the SASSSA 15s Girls trainings, I won’t attend those. But, hopefully, I’ll travel up to Mildura for the hitout against Victoria in four weeks. If that doesn’t clash too much with the renovations we’re doing at the moment. Anyway, the Mitchell Cup was a success (not so much for my team, although we did win one of three games, and really took it up to them in the final game, before a Colm Maguire double-touchdown streak ended our hopes of winning the inaugural Mitchell Cup). Selections were announced, and several of my good mates, and Mariners players were selected. I was surprised at some of the selections, but I know how sometimes someone looking in from outside doesn’t know exactly what the selectors were looking for, so I won’t criticize the final team. One of the girls I took to the 15s Nationals last year was selected into the Women’s Open team, as well as another who I took away a couple of years ago. The fact that a player who is 16 is selected into the Open side (we also run an 18s team, which she also played in a month or so ago) shows just how much potential she has. Jess, if you read this, I’m so proud of you. I’m sure you’ll perform as well at Mildura as you did (once you got over your cold) at the Gold Coast last year. Anyway, it’s only 6 weeks until we travel to Darwin for the 15s, and we are starting to hit some good form. There are a few of the girls carrying injuries, and some of them have had the flu over the past fortnight. When the two youngest players in the team each score a touchdown against men, and both of them by stepping a fully grown man, you know you have some players with a whole lot of potential. (It was funny to hear how guys who get burned by a 13-year-old and their teammates react. “The only reason they scored that touchdown was because fell over.” I spoke to Katie, and told her that one of our opposition said that. I asked her why the guy fell over, her response: “Because I snapped him.”)