Catching a late train

Thu 1st Oct

After last night's activities, it was 9am before I emerged, although I did wake briefly a few times before that as the others moved around. A lot of them had been for walks but I would not have gone even if I had been awake. When they were discussing whether to go at 6-30 or 7-00 i suggested 6-30 as I'd feel even better about sleeping through such an earlier time.

I contacted the internet suppliers today and have changed to a much cheaper weekly plan and  sorted out the email so we are more or less organised.

We had our first team meeting at 11 and then our room and a couple of others went to Woolies. It is too far to walk there. Our manager showed us her shopping basket with the Coach's shopping list - fairy bread, Lamingtons, Yogo, lollies, a kilo of refined sugar and so forth. I asked the coach if she'd brought her kids with her but it turned out to be a joke from the manager.

A couple of the passengers got dropped at the physio on the way back and then we stopped in the shopping area so someone could go to the bank. The rest of us had a look at the shops. It is quite a busy little shopping area there, although my purchases were limited to drink and chips, one girl came out of Harris Scarf's with a number of shopping bags.

Our first and only training session was at 5. It only takes 10 minutes or so to get to the stadium from the hotel, a lot less than it's been in most other cities and we had enough time to buy the tournament shirts, rugby jumpers and/or hoodies. I opted for a blue grey polo so it will be suitable for golf as well. They seemed to be quite reasonably priced as well.

The hockey centre has 3 turfs, even better than in WA with 2 flanking a new stadium /change rooms building and a 3rd slightly offset.

The training itself went well, I moved freely and don't seem to be suffering afterwards. The official opening ceremony was tonight but because the number of teams (and hence players) has grown so much over the years, we were restricted to 5 people per team - Coach, manager, captains and one other - fortunately not me.

Our room and one other headed out to a pub we passed on the way back last night. Some SA girls had eaten there and siad the food was good and only $5. For this you got a choice of steak and schnitzels, with or without parmagama sauce. I had the latter and even with a side sald and a drink it was still a cheap night out. There was a group of NSW girls there - including some 55s who we play tomorrow and also a few Vic girls, so the word has got around. We stopped for a gelati on the way home.