st_trav_ofWA
Norm Smith Medallist
- Joined
- Aug 17, 2015
- Posts
- 5,810
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- AFL Club
- St Kilda
after Saturdays game im sure theres more than a fair share of doom and gloom posts so i thought i would share with you a good news story about this weekend.... As you know this weekend was the Western Saints Moorabbin trek , basically a weekend for our WA members to fly over and be hosted by the club. A WA members footy trip has been floated by the Western Saints to our members a couple of times over the years and to be blunt the responce was never great enough to persue, this year with the lure of touring the new Moorabbin facility presented a new opportunity for us to try the footy trip thing , the initial talks with the club about this started all the way back in August last year.. after months of planning working with our Travel agent in Flight Centre, the club and our members we ended up with 23 confirmed "Trekers"
The weekend was planned to be fairly relaxed with heap of free time for the members to do their own thing outside the footy commitments , our travel agent catered the the trip to suit the members wants with some flying in on early flights some on later some with hotel up grades some in more budget hotels.
unfortunatly at the last minute we had three members have to change plans due work emergancys so our squad was set at 21, The Western Saints decided that due to the numbers and the change of rain we would use a private bus service from Fed Square to Moorabbin we decided due to the special nature of this trip that we would also cover the cost of this . So on the bus we jumped and away we went to Moorabbin .
Our first impressions oF the new home was amazment on how much of a change it had undergone the place looked super impressive ... after meeting with our club contact we were led out to the grassed area next to the gym to watch the captains run from our vantage point we could see the boys doing their pre training warm up and i personally having seen the old set up was suitably impressed by the equipment available to the boys.
We were fortunate enogh to be able to listen in to the Nathan Freeman presser as it was being recorded and i was surprised how polished he was infront of the camrea for a still young man ... Training started and to be honest was your stock standard captains run , nothing to really report except the great fear that Gresh would miss as he was a noticable absent player.. after the session all the players were as always fantastic with the fans signing autographs taking photos and chatting to everyone. I had a good chance to chat to Blake and he seemed to be very upbeat and positive and took a great photo with myself and Western Saints secretary Sharon holding up our western Saints banner. once the boys were done with the autographs we were led to the team conferance room.
the team conference room if pretty familar as we see it a fair bit in the Saints video's such as the Nathan Freeman announcment and of course the Koby Stevens retirement video. As sponsors of the Re-imagine Moorabbin project we had a quick chat from Glenn Tanner (GM of Foundation) about how our contribution helped deliver what we have today and how we are moving to improve even further in that space with the continued support from our loyal donators. Next we got an extra special treat, Alan Richardson come in and spoke very candidly with us ... there is a lot of critisim of the way richo talks and performs on tv etc but i think given the enviroment and the people around he was more open to talking freely and was pretty upfront on a few things ... i wont go into great detail but theres was a lot that richo was saying that actually did make me change my mind on a few things . Richo was only meant to chat to us for a few minutes but as we kept firing the questions to him he was happy to answer them.
Really this was fantastic , as an AFL coach you wouldnt think many would take the time in a forum such as that to take questions but he di and while some were not easy quetions to answer i think he did well.
The weekend was planned to be fairly relaxed with heap of free time for the members to do their own thing outside the footy commitments , our travel agent catered the the trip to suit the members wants with some flying in on early flights some on later some with hotel up grades some in more budget hotels.
unfortunatly at the last minute we had three members have to change plans due work emergancys so our squad was set at 21, The Western Saints decided that due to the numbers and the change of rain we would use a private bus service from Fed Square to Moorabbin we decided due to the special nature of this trip that we would also cover the cost of this . So on the bus we jumped and away we went to Moorabbin .
Our first impressions oF the new home was amazment on how much of a change it had undergone the place looked super impressive ... after meeting with our club contact we were led out to the grassed area next to the gym to watch the captains run from our vantage point we could see the boys doing their pre training warm up and i personally having seen the old set up was suitably impressed by the equipment available to the boys.
We were fortunate enogh to be able to listen in to the Nathan Freeman presser as it was being recorded and i was surprised how polished he was infront of the camrea for a still young man ... Training started and to be honest was your stock standard captains run , nothing to really report except the great fear that Gresh would miss as he was a noticable absent player.. after the session all the players were as always fantastic with the fans signing autographs taking photos and chatting to everyone. I had a good chance to chat to Blake and he seemed to be very upbeat and positive and took a great photo with myself and Western Saints secretary Sharon holding up our western Saints banner. once the boys were done with the autographs we were led to the team conferance room.
the team conference room if pretty familar as we see it a fair bit in the Saints video's such as the Nathan Freeman announcment and of course the Koby Stevens retirement video. As sponsors of the Re-imagine Moorabbin project we had a quick chat from Glenn Tanner (GM of Foundation) about how our contribution helped deliver what we have today and how we are moving to improve even further in that space with the continued support from our loyal donators. Next we got an extra special treat, Alan Richardson come in and spoke very candidly with us ... there is a lot of critisim of the way richo talks and performs on tv etc but i think given the enviroment and the people around he was more open to talking freely and was pretty upfront on a few things ... i wont go into great detail but theres was a lot that richo was saying that actually did make me change my mind on a few things . Richo was only meant to chat to us for a few minutes but as we kept firing the questions to him he was happy to answer them.
Really this was fantastic , as an AFL coach you wouldnt think many would take the time in a forum such as that to take questions but he di and while some were not easy quetions to answer i think he did well.
