I met up with the T-Birds coach Jane Woodlands-Thompson, who comes from a similar background to myself.
Jane and I have known each other for a fair while, but for her to invite me onto the court to meet the girls and then to sit with me for the night in the lead-up to a grand final was a great experience.
It was probably a dream come true for all footballers when I was invited into the girls’ change rooms to sit in on the pre-training meeting.
The Thunderbirds have been working closely with a hypnotherapist over the course of the year and they feel as though they’ve got some great results from it.
Hypnotherapy is something we’ve delved a little bit into.
We’ve done it in small doses with individual players rather than the whole group, but we certainly don’t dismiss it.
In the change rooms, the girls were affirming in their minds just what would happen in the game, writing it down and also writing down their goals for the grand final.
They all signed a pledge to each other and in the intimate setting of a small locker room you couldn’t help but be impressed by how committed they all were to the same cause.
At an AFL club there are team managers and a lot of other people there to help the senior coach, but Jane played the role of all of them.
She talked about the intensity of the training session coming up, which at Port Adelaide would normally be left up to our fitness coach.
Jane spoke about the arrangements prior to and after the game on Sunday, which other people would usually handle for an AFL coach and I even saw some of the girls strapping their own ankles.
You have to applaud the girls for working under those conditions. They weren’t letting anything in regards to money or resources get in the way of success.
I mean, the conditions are pretty good, but they’re not at the elite level we see in the world of AFL or that you might expect when you see the girls play on TV.
I had a chat to Jane after training and she was telling me about the team’s recent trip to New Zealand. It reminded me of the early days in our own national competition.
When the VFL first became the AFL, you’d go to an oval interstate and the centre square would be roped off, so you couldn’t use it or you weren’t allowed to train on the ground at all.
Jane was saying that their New Zealand opponents last week closed all the doors of the stadium and put everything possible in the Thunderbirds’ way to make it difficult for them to prepare for the game.
All these little things probably happened early days in football, but as the competition became more professional they were ironed out.
Looking at it all, I think our players are spoiled.
Having seen the demands the girls on the girls in way of preparation I think they get more from fewer resources than our own players.
But I have to draw the line somewhere. Jane said one of the things the girls did kick up about was not having the right nail polish in the first aid bag ... I don’t think we need to go that far.
The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL.
