Day 11 - Thurs 23rd Oct 08

Coach has had us at Mounties Gym again, a great place to train, huge with lots of free weights, all manner of bikes/rowing machines, swimming pools and the rest. They have all the facilities you need for an individual and a rugby team. The manager Mike told us they had 90,000 members in their clubs with 70,000 members in this one site alone. Membership is quite cheap, around $6 but that's just to get your permission to be on the premises, something to do with Australian drinking laws, the gym itself has something like 5,000 members, still a big number. They have two pools, conference facilities and a 600 seat theatre, no wonder they do well.

Colin (our conditioner) obviously wanted to put us through all the equipment available and 90 minutes later we knew we had been in a gym. Lunch again was great, one thing we players are really happy with is the F word, FOOD, no shortage of it and very tasty as well.

In the afternoon I took 10 players and some of the management staff to a coaching session at Holy Cross School in one of the Sydney suburbs. 250 kids met us along with teachers and local media. We split the kids into age groups and worked out some skills programmes - we did these for about 45 minutes until we were asked to play a game of touch with the 14-15 year old players. At ths point I decided I had done my bit and left that to killer Corcoran (Ged) et al to have a run.

When we got back to the hotel we had some sandwiches and had to get dressed up in our suits for the first time. We had a function organsed by our blarney army team in Charterhouse, one of our sponsors in the Central Business District of Sydney. We were again joined by the Irish consul Pat Scullion. The event was a shirt presentation where sponsors give an Irish team shirt to an individual player, who signs it and gives it back to the sponsor as a momento of the occasion. A nice touch we all thought.

There was a short auction afterwards but unfortunately Kel (Andy Kelly) was the auctioneer and he was speaking so quietly it was hard to hear him on the rooftop of the building in Sydney. Overall a good night and we were back on the bus for the 40 minute journey back to Paramatta and bed.

Ni Neart go cur le cheile