Training Weekend 1

Day 1

Just two weeks after the announcement of the team, our first training weekend was upon us. The team all made their way down to Cork early Saturday morning for a 12pm start. Our coach Ian French gave us a quick welcome and we wasted no time getting warmed up in straight into practice. We covered quite a lot of end zone plays over the day and spent a good while focusing on improving a specific throw we each were having trouble with. The training ended with a game among ourselves which really did have an excellent standard and the newly formed o-line took little time to blend together.

We had a team meeting that evening in Caitlin's house we drank tea and talked about our goals for the season. We also concluded that it was not athleticism or amazing throws that characterize the best ultimate player. But rather a player's financial stability...

I'm fairly sure everyone had a fairly tame Saturday night, except for Oisín who arrived home the next morning looking far too fresh and rested for a man who stayed out all night.

Day 2

We were greeted by a much calmer day on the Sunday and also a much earlier start. Boots were on at 10:30am and we were ready to go. That morning we practiced some defense drills as well as our 3-4 offence before having a match among ourselves just before lunch.

We had arranged to play UCC mixed that afternoon so we made our way over to the farm where the final of the beginner blitz was just finishing up. We warmed up again and ran through what I considered to be the most successful deep receive drill I had ever taken part in. We started the game on O and Brian opened the scoring with a big huck to Keith for the score. But it was the D-line who were to be the real stars of this show who during the midst of the game bagged us about 7 scores on the trot. We now had a considerable advantage and although O-line were a bit sluggish to close out the game we won by 2 points. All in all a great weekend and really set a good tone for the season ahead.