The past few days in Gifu brought out many surprise for the Jillies Family.  At one of our training sessions a worker from the stadium approached our goalie Audrey Smith asking who our coach was. She pointed him in the direction of Jig. The man, however, called him Mr. Jig and asked Mr. Jig if he could play music over the speakers while the Japanese Men’s side did their running. Mr. Jig happily agreed. A few minutes later what sounded like Japan’s pop music came blaring over the sound system. We couldn’t hear anyone! But we embraced the challenge and wise Mr. Jig said ‘This is how loud the crowds could be in the Junior World Cup. We need to be able to play under these conditions. So the Jillies trained on whilst Japan’s version of Jason Derulo belted out some ballads.

The food at lunch has also been a daily surprise for the family. Each day our Bento Boxes contain new items inside. We all turn to Lizzy and ask her to taste them first and decide for us if we will like them or not – it’s a good system. For the non-adventurous types, the side of rice is usually all that is eaten.

On a very sad note, one of my fellow Gryphon sponsors and Jillaroos member Mariah Williams was injured at training. Mariah tore her meniscus and flew home on Sunday to have surgery on Monday. This is a devastating loss to our Jillaroos Family but hopefully Mariah will have a speedy recovery and will still be available for Junior World Cup selection. Mariah is a great asset to our forward line and can always find the back of the net, so we are all hoping she recovers well.

Although the Jillies were all shocked by the news of Mariah, we still had a match to prepare for. Our first game against Japan University took place on Saturday afternoon. Very surprisingly I was named captain for the first game, a huge honour for me. The Jillies played out the 70-minute match with only 3 subs, due to the loss of Mariah and Murphy Allendorf’s pending fitness test to allow her to play. The game got off to a good start with the Jillaroos having a lot of attack, however at around the 10^th minute we conceded a goal. We soon struck back with Kate Gilmore, another Gryphon player, slamming away a field goal from an attacking overlap into the circle. With the score 1-1 at half time, we stepped back out onto the pitch ready to win. But the Japanese had a counter attack and converted another goal. With many goal scoring opportunities it wasn’t long before the Jillaroos hash tag ‘They always score’ came out to play. Jacqui Day, another great Gryphon player, made an intercept in our press and charged forward into the Japanese defensive circle having a cracker reverse stick shot on goal. The goalie saved it but Jac was quick to the rebound and fed the ball to Kathryn Slattery, another Gryphon player, on the second post to secure the ball into the back of the net. The Gryphon sticks were certainly on fire! The end score was 2 all.

On Sunday morning as the team got ready for training before another game in the afternoon, I too was getting ready. Unfortunately in the process of getting changed from PJ’s to training uniform I felt a piercing twinge in my back. With only underwear on I had to fumble for pants and go find our physio, Timomatic (Tim Bass). The verdict was, I sprained a rib joint – putting on undies! Unfortunately, I was not able to play the game and had to spend the whole day in bed. I couldn’t go out and watch the girls’ play but the Jillies won 5-2 with only two subs! They played an exceptional game as my sources told me.

We had a day off hockey today, but a great gym and stretching session in the morning. It was also D-day for Murphy Allendorf who had to reached a minimum of 11.8 on the beep test on the back of injury to allow her to play – the news was great, Murph ran 11.10! The Jillies are now out on an afternoon adventure – however I’m not entirely sure what they are doing as I am typing this while they are out and I am still in bed. Knowing the Jillies family they are probably having a blast! Hopefully all this bed rest will allow me to play in the third game tomorrow at 9am. With Murphy now able to play and the high possibility of myself playing as well, the Jillies will take on game 3 with the full 16 players. Fingers crossed and bring on game three!

#theyalwaysscore

Gryphon lads are at it again, Traveling the world and playing some hockey along they way. The 2013 European Tour is in full swing as we speak. We are currently in Rotterdam (Holland) preparing for the World League 3, which for those who don’t know is the qualifiers for the 2014 Hockey World Cup which will also be played in Holland. We flew out of perth on the 31st of May on our long trip to Amsterdam. After a 12.5 hour flight we landed in Dubai had something to eat, checked up on the latest footy scores and before we knew it we were back on another plane to Holland. Another 7 hours past and we had made it. After the normal “Where is my bag” at the airport we coached it to Rotterdam.

The team has now been in Rotterdam for 5 days and have had plenty of time on the hockey pitch (the last 2 days have been the best in Holland for their year). We also have a lot of down time whilst we are on tour, XBOX is a huge hit with the lads, bragging rights are right up there at the moment for FIFA champs, also find a lot of boys playing cards in the hallways of our hotel. As the sun doesn’t go down here until around 10.00pm we find ourselves playing a lot of hands of cards or games of whatever on the xbox. But back to the hockey, we played a game against the Dutch team on wednesday just gone and got the W 3-1. In our next game we knocked off the holland boys again, this time 5-2 was the end result with the big moose Aran Zalewski and Trent Mitton getting on the board for the gryphon crew.

On saturday morning we trekked it to Belgium, we’ll be here for the next 3 days, which includes a game against the Belgians who have been on fire lately with some wins against the England team. Should be a good one!

That’s about it for now, stay tuned for further updates…. and check out our video on youtube

G-team out!

• Lily Brazel Jillaroos Tour Blog

Day 1 

The trip got off to a great start within the first minutes as our coach Craig Victory, or Jig as everyone knows him by, being a no show at Perth airport. With our head coach MIA we turned to the wise Ben Tarbox for answers. Turns out in Jigs attempt to tidy his cluttered office (to put it nicely) and bring out his creative flair to make his office space ‘inspiring’, Jig managed to throw out his passport. But after a morning well spent at the Passport Office, the man himself arrived fashionably late sparing just 20 minutes before boarding. Good work Jig!

It was off to Japan we flew; a six hour flight to Singapore, a two hour stop over, followed by another 6 hour flight to Nagoya and then an hour bus trip to our hotel in Gifu. We were all tired, hungry and keen to shower. On arrival at the hotel Pammy, our adopted Jillaroos mother, (or JaPAM as we now call her) informed us our rooms wouldn’t be ready until after training. Our response – shattered. So we opted for a team walk and lunch before we headed to training.

Our first few minutes on the pitch in Gifu didn’t display our World’s Best standard that we are striving for. The travelling was definitely a factor but as Jig said/always says this is all preparation for Junior World Cup and we are always searching for opportunities to improve. After a good talk from Jig, the Jillaroos stepped it up. The session wasn’t at our greatest standard but we got rid of the cobwebs and are moving forward for the next week. Not to mention our ice bath recovery in the blow-up-pool in the rain definitely kept us on our uncompromising journey to success.

A tired Jillaroos Family heads to bed in preparation for another big day of training tomorrow.

Hi there, my name is Mariah Williams and I am 17 years of age. I was born in a small country town called Parkes. I moved to Newcastle 4 years ago to further my hockey career.  I received an AIS scholarship this year but I decided to finish my HSC at Hunter Sports High school. I will be moving to Perth in November to take up my AIS scholarship. I have recently been picked for the junior world cup squad for 2013. In January this year I played in the AYOF (Australian Youth Olympics Festival) with the Jillaroos. At the tournament we played 3 test matches against Great Brittan. Once the tournament started we played Great Brittan, United States of America and China. We went through that tournament with 3 wins and a draw. We ended up taking home the gold medal.

In February I was picked to play for the jillaroos in the Junior World Cup Oceania Qualifiers at the Gold Coast. We were meant to play against Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand. But Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea pulled out so we just had a 3 game test series against New Zealand. We beat NZ in the 3 matches and ended up with the Gold medal again.

I just recently have got home from Darwin playing for NSW under 21’s. We went through to the semis undefeated but unfortunately went down in the final against Queensland with 1v1’s.

I was named on Wednesday the 17^th of April to play for the Hockeyroo’s in Perth on the 24^th-28^th of April 2013 to play against Korea. This will be my debut for the Hockeyroo’s.

Anyways enjoy!

Mariah

I’m Loïs Sevestre (you probably know better my older brother Lucas who is also a G-Team member) and it’s my first post on G-Life.

I’m 22, and have been playing with Gryphon sticks since 2010. I’ve done all my learning of hockey in St Germain HC, near Paris, which is probably the best club of the last ten years in France. But at the age of 18, I moved to the city of Lyon due to studies commitments – I’m learning environmental engineering – and so I started to play for the FC Lyon HC five years ago. As a fullback, playing for Lyon gave me the possibility to improve myself in order to play in the French 1st League and later to reach French national teams U21 and then Senior Team from 2010 to 2011 under orders of Scott Goodheart and Chris Rowohlt.

FC Lyon HC is one of the most successful clubs in France, winning in particular ten titles in a row from 1968 to 1977. After many years without success, Lyon has been back in the Top 4 of the League from 2010 qualifying for three semi-finals in a row and playing the final in 2011 (lost after penalty-stroke against Montrouge). This year, the aim of the club is to reach another time the final which will be organized in Lyon and so to qualify for the first time to the EHL.

And we are on the good way, as we finished 4th of the regular phase behind Lille, St Germain, Racing CF and above Montrouge and Paris Jean Bouin. In order to qualify for semi-final, we needed to play play-off games against the 5th ranked, Montrouge, last week end. On Saturday, after a closed first half (1-0 at half-time), we scored 4 more times in second half to win the first game 5-1 on their pitch. The following day, on Sunday, with this big advantage in our favor, they played without fear, putting a lot of pressure on us, avoiding us to build efficiently our game, but we remained strong and we made a draw 2-2 in front of our public.

So we qualified for our 4th semi-final in a row which will be played against Lille, the 2011-2012 champion, a strong team with several international players. It will be a revenge as they beat us last year in semis. The first game will be played in Lyon on Saturday the 25th May, and the second game will be in Lille on Sunday, the 26th May. The other semi-final will confront St Germain and Racing CF.

Soon, you will have news from the French league.

Cheers.

After two games, we are at the top of the pool with Belgium and Canada (2 wins each). We won a tricky first game against a usual opponent, Poland, for our start of the competition with a sunny and warm day in front of a nice affluence in the stands. After two minutes, Poland took the lead on a Penalty corner but we fought hard with patience to end the first half with 2-1 for us at the scoreboard. We made the break by leading 3-1 twenty minutes before the end of the game, but Poland didn’t give up and came back to 3-2 and missed an opportunity to draw on a penalty corner. Fortunately, we concluded the match with a fourth goal to end this up, 4-2 and the pleasure to earn a first victory against a direct rival in the competition.

France – Pologne (Poland) (4-2) :

The day after, we were opposed to Portugal who lost 19-0 against Belgium the day before. So we wanted to use this match to correct our outlet, and get some confidence on our Penalty Corner.  The match was terrible for us, with a huge number a skill mistakes by every player, and a lack of commitment and aggresivity… We won 6-0, with too many missed chances to score although I managed to score two direct dragflicks on Penalty corners.

France – Portugal  (6-0) :

Today is about resting and preparing for the game tomorrow against the favorites of the competition, Belgium, at 6pm (local time)…

All the best.

Lucas

We started the preparation with France for the World League Round 2 two months ago in Paris with a large group of 30 players. After a few camps and games in Germany, Netherlands and France we are now 18 with 5 days left before the World League Round 2 that will be held in Paris, at my old club in France.

During the preparation we had the great opportunity to train for one week at Mannheim, in the amazing indoor pitch…  I can tell you, if you have a competition in Asia, don’t hesitate to plan a week of training here. The place is warm, heavy and very humid but fantastic to train during tough winters like we had this year! We played 4 games in 5 days and two against the prestigious team of Germany even though they were missing 10 important players playing EHL with their clubs.

You can find the video of our win over Germany:

In the following days we had to deal with a heavy schedule of games with the Club and the National Team as we needed to end the Belgium championship by 3 games on Friday, Sunday and Wednesday and leave for Amsterdam, Netherlands to play with France against Amsterdam on the Thursday night. I don’t hide from you that it has been quiet tough to recover from these 4 games in 5 days…
But four days later, I was back in France for a camp of 6 days based on physical preparation, tactics and Penalty Corners concluded by two games against Hampstead, an English club, coached by my Friend and old coach Chris Rowohlt…

Last week, we had two friendly games against Belgium that we can now consider as a top team! They are the favorites for the competition that starts on Monday where Belgium, Canada, France, Poland, Scotland and Portugal take part. After these two games we lost 3-1 and 4-1, the final selection has been released and I learn with a great pleasure my selection as fullback. I also have an important role to play as a dragflicker on the Penalty Corners…

I look forward to start the competition because we are going to play at home, in front of our own crowd who will cheer for France like never before…  We don’t often have the opportunity to play important tournaments, with good teams at home so this is a major event that would be held in St Germain.

To Promote the Competition and Hockey in France, I had the chance to participate in a sport TV Show  live with my Team Mate, François Scheffer (GTeam Member). We spend 15 minutes talking about the French team, our chances in the competition, the way we play hockey and I think we’ve made a good promotion to Gryphon as we took our Pro Tour sticks on the stage with the TV presenter..

On the pics (thanks to Damien Burna) you can see the place where the competition will take place even though the set-ups were not ready yet.

I’ll keep you updated this week about the matches that we start on Monday against Poland.

Cheers.

Lucas

My name is Martin Babicky. I am 24 years old and I am a new member to the G-Team. I was born in the beautiful city of Prague and I’m currently playing in Aberdeen, Scotland for AAM Gordonians. I am also a member of the Czech national team, having played for my country since 2007. 2013 is very special for us. We won the gold medal at the 2011 B division EuroHockey Championship in Vinnitsa, so that means that this August we will play in the EuroHockey Championship A divison in Antwerpen. We are in this league along with the best 7 teams in Europe after a long wait of 6 years since we last played in this division.

Unfortunately our last visit to A division in 2007 wasn’t very successfull . I was a young chicken then, but it was a very good experience. So we are trying to avoid the same result as last time by being really well prepared for this years tournament. But our first big tournament this year is coming next month…. The World Hockey League round 2.

As  a warm up to the tournaments, this year we’ve played against club side teams from Belarus and Germany. The results were ok; we managed to win two matches and one draw. But the winter seems to be quite happy in Europe and doesn’t want to disappear so we’ve played in very tough conditions and zero degree temperatures. I am sure you guys can imagine, it’s not very good weather for hockey.

Then the guys played two test matches vs the Austrian national team – which will be one of our opponents at The World Hockey League. They were both close games, but on that occasion we lost both games. Unfortunately I wasn’t there because I went to Scotland for club duties. It’s always hard for our coaches and managers to gather the strongest national team, because many players are playing abroad in countries like Germany, Italy, Holland etc…

As for my club side, here in Scotland, the league is almost over. After plenty of postponed games (yes, we are in Scotland and you never know how the weather will be) and many reorganised fixtures, we are finally approaching the end of the season. Just one match remaining to play and for us it will be the ‘‘decider‘‘  – whether we will stay up in National League One, or go to the playoff match vs a team from Division Two. We are three points ahead of the team beneath us and we are in very good form after the last few weeks. We need just one point from our last match then we can open the Champagne to celebrate avoiding relegation. Before all of that though, this week I have been coaching for a Skoolsports Hockey camp here in Aberdeen. The kids and coaches had a lot of fun coaching and playing hockey over 3 days as we trained the hockey superstars of tomorrow.

Cheers!

Martin

I had the great pleasure to recently take part in the 1st ever International 5′s event in Hong Kong last weekend. This was an exhibition event on the same weekend as the Hong Kong 6′s which is an event held annually over the Easter weekend including participants from the local clubs in HK and some teams from other countries.

Due to the amount of expats in HK it is a great event with all different cultures coming together and playing hockey. There were 4 International teams of 7 or 8 players that were flown over for the event. A “Holland Team” “England Team” and Australian Team” and an Asian Team” with players from Hong Kong Singapore Pakistan and Japan.

Our first match was an exhibition match of 11 on 11 with the “Euro All stars” (England and Holland) versus the “Jamie Dwyer Barbarians” (Australia and Asia). The game was a fantastic enterprise of skill from all around the world with the Euro All stars eventually coming out on top 7-5.

We then moved on the the International 5′s competition. The format was great with new rules introduced to become a high paced exciting game for the fans eg. shoot from anywhere was probably the most used new rule.

We played 2 out of the 3 teams, Beating Holland 15-8 yes 15-8 is the correct score line, and the Asian team 16-5. Unfortunately the heavens opened up for our game against the England.

A huge thanks goes to the Hong Kong Football Club  where we played, ate breakfast lunch and dinner, showered and relaxed while we were there, and everyone who was involved with this amazing event. Below are some photos of the trip. Thanks to AUSSIE BOB for the photos they are rippers!!

Cheers

Whetty #12

It’s pretty safe to say that Queensland are the team to beat. Having been undefeated and able to score goals at will, these guys will be tough to knock off. NSW have also had a pretty impressive run, having lost only to QLD but bleeding 15 more goals. Outside chances are the solid Victorians, who have built momentum from winning their last 4 games. You never know what is going to happen when it comes to the finals, where teams show their true colours. Best of luck to them all!

Ladder

Results

Finals Fixtures

Under 21 Women’s National Hockey Championships:

The NSW girls are showing their depth and strength by fighting through the rounds undefeated. Their biggest opponent looks like the mighty QLD side, having only lost the one match to NSW and only conceded an incredibly impressive 2 goals (one to NSW and one to WA). With the finals looming, will there be an upset, or will NSW hold firm and remain undefeated? Anything can happen in the finals, so best of luck to all teams!

Ladder

Results

Finals Fixtures