Back in those days I trained with the club and helped my dad out with the family home relocation business.
I don’t do too much of the latter anymore – the commitment to the club has become so great.
I’ve been restricted to doing a lot of odd jobs around the house in the spare time that I do have.
Most of the guys in the team live with a five-minute drive of the Gabba, but I like my space on the water out on the Redcliffe Peninuslar, which is about 35 minutes north of Brisbane on a good run.
I like the water and my wife Felicity’s parents live just down the road. She grew up in the area and I grew up on the northside of Brisbane too, so it is ‘home’ for us.
There’s a lot of nice beaches and facilities around Redcliffe now and we often drive around the waterfront and have a lunch or picnic, and see what the council is spending the rates money on.
I have to admit, I’ve paid more attention to our lawn this summer than I ever have done before.
It was so dry before Christmas that the dogs had torn up the lawn and our little boy Brock couldn’t get outside to play, but the lawn has come on really well with all the rain we’ve had over the last couple of months.
The only problem with the rain is that it can really affect the traffic, but I’ve been doing the drive for so long now that it doesn’t bother me too much.
Fishing has been a favourite hobby of mind for a long time, but I haven’t done a lot of it lately because I haven’t had much time.
I can’t give you much of a fishing report, but I can tell you that there are a lot of mudcrabs around at the moment. The freshwater has been washing them out.
My dad came down the other day and caught a couple of big catfish off the pontoon. They’re too much trouble to skin and eat, so he threw them back.
It has been a big pre-season of training for us again this summer, and the game is getting more professional all the time.
In the pre-season especially, you can train in the morning, middle of the day, late afternoon…pretty well anytime. It’s just like being on call.
We have a lot of meetings and it’s a lot different to when I started - you’re at the club more and away from home more than ever before.
Some days you can be there at 8am and not get home to 8pm. Sometimes I’ll go home when there is a lull in the middle of the day, but that adds about 90 minutes extra driving time.
If I stay in the city, I usually go to Felicity’s parents car yard, Just Cheap Cars, on Old Cleveland Road. If Dad’s around I might go and give him a hand for an hour or two.
I do like to come home during the day to see Brock. I’ll probably have more time to do that during the year when I’m playing and in more of a routine.
This year I got a bit fatigued before Christmas. I’d had a long training load – I’m in the group of five elite runners and I also trained for the Noosa triathlon straight after the footy season, so I didn’t have much of a break.
I was starting to push it a bit too much just before Christmas, so I slowed down a bit - I knew I’d done the work.
As you can imagine, after such a long preparation I was really looking forward to the NAB Cup starting.
I still get excited about playing and just competing – it is important that the enjoyment factor is still there.
