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We have already climbed the tower and abseiled down twice today and will have to shortly throw back on our harnesses which help us scale the frame of the structures.
A typical day for me is to get up at 5:15 AM, pack my esky and get into my car to drive the hour and a half trip down to Darkes Forrest where I meet the rest of my work team. From there we hop in the 4WD and trek through the access track into the bush to our assigned tower. We work for about 10-12 hours climbing towers, sand blasting, hauling barrels with sand and painting. We finish around 5-6pm and then I hop back in the car to drive another hour or so to train with Sydney FC at Homebush or Seven Hills. We usually finish training at about 9pm and I get home around 10pm, quickly sort my lunch for the next day, shower, have something to eat, watch a few minutes of TV before finally passing out.
I love what I do but sometimes it's nice to dream of what it would be like to just play football as my full time job and have enough income to live comfortably. I think how much better we would all be as players if we just put in 100% of our time and effort training and playing like the Americans and Canadians do. Just think how much better we would be as a football nation. We managed to get to the top ten in world rankings and that was with girls juggling football, work and study commitments. I hope one day we do become fully professional... it could happen!
It was a relatively light training session on Monday night at Homebush so the body is feeling pretty good. We had a short reflection on Saturday's game against Canberra in which we lost 1-0, and then worked on some defensive positioning before playing a short sided game at the end. It was a disappointing loss as we thought we would have at least had the upper hand physically over a team that had a very early morning before boarding a bus for four hours and then had to play in hot conditions. But they showed a lot of resilience on the day.
After the warm up I felt pretty flat and my muscles were heavy. When we walked back into the change rooms I was surprised to discover that the other girls had felt the same. It was crucial we picked up the tempo for the game.
Although we tried our hardest it just wasn't our day. We were moving the ball well, piecing together some good football but all the while failing to get anything past Canberra 'keeper Lydia Williams. We gifted Canberra with a goal in the first half which came down to a breakdown of communication and some mis-reading of each other. The ball was hit deep into our half with a Canberra United striker in pursuit and with Brogan to contest some misunderstanding between our defense and goalkeeper led to the ball being snatched and played into an un-tracked forward who had an open goal and finished well. We got a bit lazy and assumed the ball would be cleared so we switched off from having that imperative instinct that defenders need - the surmise of the unexpected.
It felt like we had about 20 shots on goal, most missing the target and one hitting the bar. The rest were parried away or collected by Williams in goal. After the game a few girls had heat stroke and were written off for the rest of the day.
Wednesday night's session was a mini World Cup consisting of four teams of four in a shooting box (two full sized goals facing each other about 30 metres apart) followed by some fitness training. We will be heading into this weekend's game against Newcastle with a never-say-die attitude. Losing another game after last week is not an option. However we may be without our other centerback, Brogan, due to injury and we are still waiting on two of out top strikers Leena Khamis and Kyah Simon to return either from overseas or from injury.
Bring on Newcastle!
Key player for Westfield W-League side Sydney FC, Thea is also a current Matilda with a strong passion for womens football and the sport in general. Catch the W-League every week at your local ground or if you can't make the game watch it live on ABC1. Read Thea's other columns for The Football Sack.