Half of me was itching to get out and play footy, and the other half was really enjoying the rest that my body was getting.
The body has felt like it has taken a bit of bashing after the first seven weeks, so it was nice to get that recovery time in. At the end of the day, the bye came at a good time.
The speed of the game and the strength of the game makes it harder on the body every year and I support Leigh Matthews’ idea to have two byes for all players during the season.
That would work perfectly from a players’ point of view. I’d even go one step further and peg back the pre-season fixtures too – I don’t think we really need to play that many games before the real stuff starts.
While we had the weekend off from playing, we still had a few commitments to do, but they were good ones.
As part of the players’ commitment to the Community Round, we all went and spent some time at different footy clubs over the weekend.
It was my girlfriend’s belated birthday celebration on Saturday, so the club and AFLQ people were good enough to send me out to a Friday night gig.
The Redland Bombers had a bye in the Velocity Sports Cup last weekend and some of us would have gone to their senior game if they were playing, but instead we did a clinic for their juniors.
They’ve got a good set-up out there at Victoria Point and we did some footy drills with all the young kids and had a ball.
It was a big week for mixing with the kids because the previous night we went out and did junior club visits.
All of the Lions boys have adopted a junior club this year and my team is Narangba.
For those of you who don’t know where it is, Narangba is on the northern outskirts of Brisbane off the highway to the Sunshine Coast, up near Caboolture way.
They’re called the Crows and they’ve only been doing a few years, but they’re doing alright.
I had a good talk to the club president while I was out there and they were losing quite a few of their kids to ‘big brother’ up the road, but the kids are starting to filter back now which is good.
I’m enjoying being involved in something like this and I’ll take an interest how they go for the rest of the year, now that grading is over and the real premiership season starts for the Brisbane juniors.
