Queensland U18 player, Liam Dawson, gives us his insights into the 2014 rep season.
It’s been a pretty full-on couple of weeks.
We got back from Europe last week and the trip was awesome, but it’s good to get back into a normal lifestyle.
I’ve got family in London so I’ve been there a few times, but the Harrow School, where we trained, was really nice and we had a tour around Wembley Stadium, which had all these things I never thought a stadium would have .
One of those was its windows, which are all diamond-shaped.
If you have flat windows, the sound rebounds straight, but these pointy, kind of triangular windows make sound go around the stadium, which makes everything seem louder – that was one of the things that stuck out to me.
The food was incredible, and I don’t reckon I’ve ever enjoyed a feed as much as I did after we got to the end of this mountain hike we did in the Swiss Alps.
Luckily we only had to walk up – I think I might have faked an injury if we had to go back down.
We also met a lot of AFL recruiters over there – I spoke to clubs like Collingwood, Geelong, North Melbourne, Freo, Gold Coast and Richmond, and we had some club interviews.
I wasn’t really asked too many weird questions –one question which was a bit weird was: “If you went to the Olympics, which sport would it be for?”
I went with ping pong – I have some good ping pong battles at home, so that was the first thing that popped into my head.
One of the guys was asked what would be the one thing he would take from his house if it was on fire and he had to get out quickly, which I thought was pretty bizarre.
The recruiters gave us a bit of an idea of what they look for as well.
They all have different things, but the one that stuck out to that I bring in my game is competitiveness – if you’re not willing to compete, there’s no point playing AFL.
It was a great trip and I’d do it anytime- just maybe give me a few months to chill out a bit.
I’m glad to be back home and back into Queensland footy.
I know the boys are really keen for this weekend’s game against the Sandringham Dragons.
I really enjoy playing Queensland footy and it’s very different to club and AIS footy.
I’ve played with a lot of the Queensland boys from Under12s, so you really get to know them and form some really good friendships.
Saturday will be a bit different to those U12 days, where the game plan was pretty much just to kick the ball long, but I’m excited.
This year will be different again, as a vice-captain and a top ager, where last year I didn’t really feel any pressure being a bottom ager and I could just go and play my footy.
I think I probably pressure myself a bit too much into worrying about what the team’s doing and what everyone else is doing, so think I need to take some of that away.
I’m really looking forward to taking more responsibility as a vice-captain and leading in the back line and trying to make sure everyone does the right things at training.
I’ve played enough Queensland footy to know how to prepare, but I probably will feel it a bit two hours outside the game.
I think we’ll do well, the boys went well against Oakleigh from what I heard and it’ll be interesting to see how we match up against the Dragons on Saturday.
