Easter Break

Well it’s been over 2 weeks since I last posted, sorry about the delay but for a few days I was actually busy and didn’t have time to write anything for the blog.

We had our big game against Olympic a week and half ago and played Peninsula Power last Saturday and were able to come away with victories in both games.

In our game against Olympic, the second place team, we won 7-3. It was a great game against a very good side. We went up 2-0 early, I scored the first, and then we missed a penalty kick around the 30^th minute that probably would have put the game away for good. However, the miss gave Olympic a glimmer of hope and they stole a goal before the half and continued pushing for the equalizer after the break, which they got early in the second half. Unfortunately for them we came roaring back, scoring 60 seconds later and securing 4 unanswered goals (I doubled my tally with the 6^th) before Olympic got a consolation 3^rd goal and Steffen completed his hat trick.

In the past round of games against Peninsula we weren’t at full strength, missing our starting goalie and one of our central midfielders. We started out playing well but after we bagged our first goal were unable to pull away like usual. The absence of our full strength side was beginning to show, even though their replacements both played admirably, and the rest of the team looked sluggish going into the break. After halftime we were still unable to find our form but kept Peninsula from finding the back of the net, which was enough to secure the 3 points. In the locker room after the game it felt more like a loss than a victory, and we all expect a better performance even though we were able to grind out 3 points away from home against a talented side. Highlights from the game can be found here.

Outside of soccer we made a trip down the coast to Lamington National Park to do some hiking. The park is south and west of Brisbane and driving there is a bit of an adventure because as you travel inland the roadways aren’t very well developed. There was only one road going up the mountain, but that road was one and a half lanes with numerous switchbacks and blind corners, so it is slow going once off the motorway. The hike we chose to go on was 10.5 kilometers and took us through very thick rain forest, down into a gorge between two mountains and along a river that had 6 or 7 waterfalls varying in height from 8 or 9 meters tall to 25 meters tall (Bucket list: Waterfalls, complete). I tried taking pictures but most didn’t turn out because it started pouring rain about 30 minutes into our 3 hour hike! At the conclusion of the hike we came across a wallaby, which while not a kangaroo or koala bear was still pretty cool.

We won’t have another game until May 7 so I’m hoping to do a little more traveling next week when everybody goes back to work after the Easter/ Anzac day holidays. I’ll be sure to have some good pictures to share then!

Hope all is well back home!

The Fruit Barn and a Goal Extravaganza

Although I have been in Australia 2 months, I am just beginning to discover some of the benefits of living in a tropical climate. In the past two weeks my roommates and I have been enjoying the overwhelming selection of fresh, in season fruit that we can find at local produce stores. Fresh watermelons (49 cents a kg), pineapples (2 for $5), pears, and any number of other fruits have become a staple of every meal, as well as a source of pride amongst the roommates for who can produce the best looking selection. I have been mowing down 2 pineapples a week, and the only problem with the fruit selection down here has been the insane price of bananas ($12 a kg) because the crop got wiped out in the floods. I love having such a great selection of fresh fruit readily available from fruit stands close by.

Although my love of food is well documented what I have been enjoying the turn of the seasons from summer to fall even more, (although there is hardly a difference) the weather has been absolutely perfect. The high everyday hovers in the low 80’s, making everyday activities much more enjoyable. The mornings and evenings are cool, a long sleeve t-shirt is enough to take in the sunrise or enjoy the great view we have of the southern stars from our back yard. I have been enjoying both of these frequently, especially a good jog at sunrise. It is a quick 10 minute drive out to the ocean to watch the sunrise, and because of the low tide there is a sand bar that runs from the shore out to a small island about 1 km out into the ocean (pictured above), what is really cool about this is the sand bar cuts a perfect trail through the water right out to the island. It was hard to motivate myself to get up early enough to take in the sunrise but the discovery of this run is making it so much easier. That, and I have recently been enjoying the benefits of iced coffee, the world seems so much brighter with a little coffee in my system.

However, everything else that takes up my time is made better by Wolves continued run of good form in the early stages of the league. We won our last two games against University of Queensland and Taringa 2-0 and 11-1 respectively. University gave us a very good game making it difficult for us to play by competing with us better than any team has so far. The Taringa game was different altogether, they actually scored the first goal, against the run of play, and they were ecstatic after scoring but we quickly responded and put the game out of reach, we really could have ended up scoring 20. Needless to say that result, combined with our other 4 victories, is turning a lot of heads. Our upcoming game against Olympic, one of the traditional powers in our league, is an absolutely massive fixture for us. We are looking forward to having a good week of training to take us into the game ready to go and continue our fine form.

Highlights from our last two games can be found at http://vimeo.com/21865245 (Taringa) and http://vimeo.com/21575932 (University), and I think that the game this weekend will be taped again so highlights should be available, and I’ll be checking in to see if the game can be found streamed live as well.

Hope all is well back home!

My First Goal...

I want to start off by wishing my sister Mo a happy birthday! Gosh you are so old now! I’m just kidding you definitely are not and I hope you have an awesome day!

Since my last update we have had 2 games, winning both. We won our games against South’s and Brisbane City 2-0 and 5-0 respectively.

I think I need to give some of the history of Wolves so people can understand what our games have been like to play in so far. Until 3 years ago Wolves had never won a single trophy usually finishing near the middle of the table in the league. However, since our current coach came to the club 3 years ago we have finished 4^th, 3^rd, and 2^nd in the league and won back-to-back Grand Finals (which is like winning the playoffs). So this year we have seen ourselves go from the hunters to the hunted, meaning we are now getting every team’s best game.

Getting back to our recent games, we were considerably better than both teams, although South’s certainly played very well against us, and all we need is to find that first goal and usually we will end up scoring a bunch. That’s what happened in our game against Brisbane City. I hope that these teams can continue to give us their best effort because it will make us that much better when we play against one of the other top teams in the league.

I am glad that we have been able to score so many goals (11 in 3 games) but what I am most excited about is that we have only conceded 1 goal so far this year. Our defense has been playing very well, and we hope that as we grow more familiar with each other we will be even harder to break down. I was also able to record my first goal of the season, scoring the first, or more importantly the winner, in our game against City. I say finally because I have had 2 headers cleared off the line and gone close with a couple of other headers so far in the season. Although the goal I scored wasn’t a header, it was a shot from the top of the 18 (maybe that will convince my coaches to put me back at forward where I belong, Ha).

Other than my soccer responsibilities I have only had time to go on one adventure in the past two weeks. Steffen, Pat, and I took a ferry to a small island just off the coast and engaged in some sea kayaking. We were able to rent the kayaks rather cheaply and took a trip around the island, which has a lot of beaches, mangroves, and a little bit of coral reef. The kayaking was awesome until the last half hour when we had to fight a stiff breeze to complete our trip around the island, we couldn’t move our arms for days after that adventure.

I’m hoping that I’ll be able to nail down a part time job soon so that I have more disposable cash to spend on trips. Until that happens though I am just sticking to soccer and making sure that we continue our hot start to the campaign.

Until next time…

Start of the Season

Hello all,

It has been a little over a week since my last update and a lot has happened since then.

The most important event being the start of the Wolves 2011 campaign, and what a start it was. We beat Capalaba, who are supposed to be one of the top 5 teams in our league, 4-1. The win was significant for a couple of reasons, other than just getting off to a winning start. As a club over the past 3 years Wolves have struggled in the start of the season, usually finding themselves in the bottom 3 or 4 of the league after 5 games. However, we are determined to avoid that this year, and a 4-1 win is a very good beginning (although I am pretty upset we didn’t keep the shutout). W were able to do this while missing 3 impact starters, although Steffen Vroom did come in after 60 minutes and ended up scoring. The guys who did step in and play for our suspended players did very well so we are expecting to have strength in our depth this year, although we are pretty excited to play with our entire first choice squad. You can watch highlights of the game on Thewashingline.com.au just search for Wolves vs. Capalaba in the recent updates.

As for how I played, my distribution was garbage but my defending was pretty good. I need to play significantly better in our next game.

The other exciting thing is that I now have 2 roommates, Steffen Vroom (who played with me at DePaul for four years) and Pat McMahon, who played at UIC and trained with me for the past year and a half. It is really nice having them down here so that we can train together in our spare time, do a little exploring, and just have some guys to hang out with. In fact yesterday we did go on an adventure, traveling down the coast a little ways to Mt. Tamborine…

This trip helped me make some headway on my bucket list! We did a few things while we were up there. The first was a hike that took us through the rainforest and past a pretty cool waterfall (2/3 waterfalls complete). Hiking through the rainforest is a pretty cool experience, because of all the shade it stays cool on the forest floor and only a few shafts of light find their way through the canopy. This yielded some awesome pictures. After completing the hike we walked around a little tourist town with a bunch of gift shops and vineyards/wineries. We then drove around the mountain a little bit stopping at a few lookouts that had great views of Gold Coast and the surrounding countryside. We ended our trip with a stop at the rainforest skywalk (on my bucket list) to do some recon for our next stop on the mountain.

That’s all I have time to write about for now. We have another game this Saturday, so we are preparing to continue the good start to our season.

Hope everyone is well back home!

Bucket List: Australia

I figure that since I have the opportunity of living in Australia for 8 months, I need to make the most of my stay and experience as much of the country as possible. My first priority for being here is soccer but our schedule leaves us some flexibility to experience other things as well. I hope to take advantage of this and decided it would be a good idea to make a bucket list for my time in Australia to make sure that I am making the most of the opportunity. In the list that follows there is a mix of adventures I would like to go on also includes goals that I have for the team and myself in our upcoming season.

1. Snorkel in the Great Barrier Reef

2. Skydive (on the sunshine coast, landing on a beach)

3. Travel to Sydney

4. Watch 1 sunrise and 1 sunset per week

5. See a Koala bear and Kangaroo in the wild, not just a zoo

6. Surf

7. Win the Brisbane Premier League

8. See at least 3 different waterfalls (1/3 done)

9. Do the Tamborine Rainforest Skywalk

10. Hike on Mt. Nebo

11. Win the Grand Finale

12. Have at least 1 A-league tryout

13. See the Brisbane Botanic Gardens (complete)

14. Work on a winery

15. Take a water taxi down the Brisbane river

I hope to complete all of these in my time down here. (although the trip to Sydney may prove difficult)

Moving on from what I hope to accomplish to what I have done in the past week….

I went on a day trip up to Mt. Coot-tha, which is 4 km west of Brisbane and visited the Brisbane Botanic Gardens and viewed the city from a few of the lookouts on the mountain. I took a bunch of pictures during this trip so I’ll shoot them out to my parents for them to distribute for those of you who can’t see them on my Facebook. The gardens were very cool. They were split up into the different types of climates they have in Australia so you could see all of the vegetation that can be found in Australia. The rainforest section was my favorite because I have never seen rainforest in person. After walking around in the gardens for a few hours I made my way up to the top of the mountain and took in the city from the lookout. It was a great view and the pictures I took can’t do it justice. Although I enjoyed that trip I was a little bit disappointed by the hiking on some of the trails I tried. It wasn’t what I was looking for, but I am planning on taking a trip out to Mt. Nebo (12 km Northwest of the city) on Sunday, which is supposed to provide better hiking and should yield even more great pictures.

The other adventure I went on this week was a trip south down the coast to the Gold Coast. Drew’s girlfriend organized a group of about 10 people who work at the cinema to make a trip to a national park there and see some glow-worms in a cave. This was a very unique experience. Getting to the cave was an adventure in itself. I don’t feel like explaining all of the details but setting out on this journey without an exact address and having the leader only vaguely remember what the parking lot looks like from her childhood is not the best way to find a cave on a mountain at 10 PM. However, it turned out really well because by the time we got there all of the other tourists were leaving and we had the place to ourselves. I had no idea what to expect once we arrived and I couldn’t take any pictures during the hike but I’ll try to explain the scene.

You start the short hike from the parking lot with nothing but torches to help you find your way through the pitch-black rainforest. I wish they were real torches but in Australia that’s what they call a flashlight. So you start making the hike down the path and you can hear a waterfall thundering in the darkness but you can’t see it until a few more minutes down the trail. After finally catching a glimpse of the waterfall you make your way down the side to a cave that is under the waterfall. After you get into the cave, and you turn off the flashlights you can see all these blue specks on the walls and ceiling of the cave. (Imagine those little glow in the dark stars you can put on your ceiling in your room, except blue not yellow). I was completely awestruck by the setting, being in the cave under a waterfall with the glow-worms all around. Not something we get to do in Chicago very often.

I’m glad I was able to make both of these trips and hope to have many more of them soon.

We have our last exhibition game on Saturday, I’m planning to make a trek to Mt. Nebo Sunday, I’ll have a room mate Monday morning (another American who I train with, Pat McMahon), and we start the season up next Saturday! Can’t even explain how excited I am to get the season started and pull the squad together, with our last few pieces arriving (Pat and Steffen Vroom) and a few other starters coming back from injury. We have high expectations for the season after beating Rochedale in the Silver Boot final when we were missing about 5 key players and they had their full squad available to them.

The new site for our league is up and you can catch all the news and highlights right all from here.

http://thewashingline.footballbrisbane.com.au/

Left Minded

After spending a few days living in my coach’s house I have moved into what will be my permanent residence in a close suburb of Brisbane. Moving into the house by myself has required me confront a fear of mine quicker than I had anticipated. Driving in the LEFT lane.

Without so much as a crash course to prepare myself I had to drive from my coach’s house into Brisbane to stay with my buddy Drew, who then brought me out to my house in Capalaba after spending a night with him. I swore that driving in the left lane would be difficult to get used to, and I’m not saying that it isn’t weird, but it is much more difficult to drive into oncoming traffic than one might think.

Really it isn’t so much the actual act of driving in the left lane that is difficult. The trick is using your turn signal, operating your windshield wipers, and shifting into gear all with the opposite hand that is hard to grasp at first. Thank god my car is automatic so I didn’t have to learn to shift with my left hand as opposed to my right. After a few days of driving I think that I have finally gotten used to driving in the wrong lane. However, walking on their sidewalks is a completely different story. It took me almost the entire week I have been here before I realized that their malls and sidewalks are no busier than Chicago, but I was completely ignorant that Australians also walk on the left. They stay to the left in everything they do; driving, walking, biking. Even their escalators are on the left side. It was mind boggling when I first realized it.

Anyways, I’ll move away from my mundane observations about the nuances of their culture and move onto some football. We played in the Silver Boot final on Sunday against one of our rivals Rochedale. To give some background on our games, they are one of the traditional powers and ran away with our league last year, but over the past three years Wolves has not lost to them in 12 games, beating them in 10. Needless to say they don’t like us very much. We won the game 3-2, scoring with 4 minutes left in the second overtime period. There were also 3 (2 for them 1 for us) red cards in the game and 2 pk’s (1 each). (This is a pre season match let me remind you, so very feisty) I was fortunate enough to be baptized into this rivalry by falling victim to their final red card offense. If you go to Paulytv.com.au the game highlights should be the first video available. Just ignore the amount of times I try to hand Rochedale a goal.

I am trying to work on getting some good pictures to show everyone but I'm running into 2 problems. First, I can't upload any of the pictures I have taken for the blog because the internet I am using is too slow. Second, it has been too cloudy to take really good pictures, even though I went out to the ocean this morning for sunrise the pictures didn't turn out. I'll keep trying and hopefully have both of these problems fixed soon.

First Days Down Under

G’day mates!

Been down in Brisbane for a few days now so I thought I would let everybody know how the first few days are going.

My flight got in on Monday morning at about 7 AM Brisbane time after a full 24 hours of traveling. The flights weren’t too bad, except on the flight from LA to Brisbane only one side of my earphones would work while watching movies. That was annoying! My coach picked me up from the airport and we went back the house he rents on an island just off mainland Australia. The island and his house are gorgeous, it’s like being on spring break, but for 8 months and with a little bit of soccer thrown in. The first day here all I did was sit outside and read and was able to get a little jog and swim in their pool. I was surprised at how good I felt while jogging, other than sweating after about 2 minutes from the heat.

However, that all changed on my second day... I woke up and was feeling a little bit woozy but didn’t think much of it. I got up and ate breakfast but I kept feeling dizzy so I decided to try to go back to sleep and see if it went away with some more rest. No luck. I couldn’t fall asleep and my stomach was starting to bother me. I ended up reading for a couple of hours, although I couldn’t roll onto my left side because my vision would go out of focus and I would get dizzy. I took some airborne, but that only made me throw up. (To put in perspective how awful I felt, I haven’t thrown up in over 10 years. Serious) So I ended up spending the entire day in bed, on my right side, and finished one of my books by reading about 600 pages of it that day. What made this even more frustrating was that we had a preseason game and my coach wanted to give me some playing time to get my lungs opened up. Nothing like being called a pathetic Yank on your second day!

I woke up Wednesday morning and felt 100% better. I was really happy about that because we had another preseason game that night. I spent the morning reading outside and sitting in the pool. In the afternoon I went and hung out with one of my buddies that plays on the team here, Drew Jeskey. We hung out by his apartment close to the city of Brisbane. He lives by their biggest mall called Chermside so we went and checked that out and met up with his girlfriend at the movie theatre she works at. They are trying to get me a job over there because it is an easy job and all the people who work there are around our age and cool people. After hanging out for a while we headed to our preseason game. The game didn’t end up kicking off until about 9:30 which was frustrating because I was so excited to play. I ended up going the full 90 minutes and felt pretty good until about the 80^th minute when my legs started to fade. I played well and fit in with all of the lads, who were all really laid back. We won our game 2-1 and advanced to the final of the tournament where we will play Rochedale, one of our rivals and the team that won the league last year.

The weather has been great. Around 75 all 3 days and slightly overcast, a break from the 90 degree weather they had been having before I got here. Australia looks just like Florida. But,I can’t wait to be able to get out and see all their unique things Australia has to offer. However, now that the Bulls game I have been watching is finishing up I need to get out to the pool and spend some time working on my tan!