As part of the weekend, the squad helped coach Parkes’ junior teams who will take part in the New South Wales Junior State Cup later this month. Parkes Touch Association President, Al Gersbach, says it was an enjoyable experience for all involved.
“We got a lot out of it from a coaching point of view and the kids got a lot more out of it. They thoroughly enjoyed themselves. We had a dinner on the Saturday night and the comment I made was that a few times during the day I got the opportunity to stand there and look around and see everyone’s expressions and all of the Australian players were laughing and doing stuff with the kids and the kids were having a ball, they were over the moon. They were all laughing and having fun and the Aussie guys did an absolute fantastic job,” Gersbach said.
It is the second time that the squad has trained in Parkes in recent years, following their first training camp at Pioneer Oval in October 2009. Gersbach says that there are plenty of benefits of having the squad comes to Parkes and hopes it can happen again in the future.
“It’s good that we’ve got that association with the guys after the first one we had, it’s just grown from that. A lot of friendships were made then and I think they continued from there, especially with the kids, they knew most of the Aussie players when they turned up. For the new kids, they were just over the moon that there were Australian players standing there in front of them.”
“I can’t speak highly enough of what they’ve done for us, the benefits we received, and the squad from the sound of it thoroughly enjoyed coming out here too. They were very professional in the way they went about things,” Gersbach said.
Close to 150 players and officials from Parkes will travel to Wollongong for the Junior State Cup later this month and the teams are looking forward to the challenge following the help from their new friends.
“I’m actually the coach of the under 12’s boys team and the improvement that came from them after the weekend, we trained again on Monday after the guys left on Sunday and the improvement was 50 per cent better than before.”
Thank you to Fiona Lovett from Parkes Touch Association for providing the photos. More photos can be found on the Touch Football Australia Facebook page as well as the High Performance part of this website. Please click on the following links:
http://www.sportingpulse.com/assocpage.cgi?c=14-3780-0-0-0&a=PHOTOGALV
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Touch-Football-Australia/384949403384
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