Obviously we don’t get a chance to go overseas during the footy season but last week Gary Rohan and I did the next best thing.

Thanks to a very loyal Swans supporter, Mal Binnie, Gaz and I went to the Qantas training building at Sydney Airport to go in the Qantas simulator.

We did a tour first and weren’t too sure what to expect. We saw one of the simulators in full flight and it was rocking all over the place. It’s like one of those virtual rides you can do at the Show, except each simulator is worth $50 million!

So you go in and it’s exactly like you’re in the cockpit of an aeroplane. They turn the lights on and you can put yourself in any airport or air strip in any city in the world.

It’s a computer screen but it’s so life-like. If you’re in there flying in to Sydney or Cairns or New York, it has every single building and the exact landscape.

It can change to day or night and you can add in wind, rain, turbulence. The pilot took us through how to start the plane, a basic rundown so we knew how to take off.

We took off out of Cairns and flew around for a bit, landed, and then decided to go to various locations around the world.

The first trip we were flying into Queenstown in New Zealand which is quite hilly, and we went to land and Gaz went too hard and smashed the whole plane.

At the same airport I landed and then did a big bunny hop and popped back up into the air and slammed down again for a pretty rough landing.

After that we chose to go through Paris, right past the Eiffel Tower, and then to New York which was pretty cool.

Gary tried to replicate the landing that pilot did a few years ago on the Hudson River, right in New York. The simulator pilot said 'you’ve just flown through a flock of birds and the engines have shut down'. We were crapping ourselves because it’s quite real when you’re in the simulator, you do feel like you’re flying.

Gaz had to try to land on the river and he went too hard as usual and smashed the plane and killed us for a second time!

We did a proper landing into Osaka, Japan, into the worst conditions where you couldn’t see anything. Flying through mist and cloud, just relying on cruise control and Gaz and I nailed that one and landed safely. Better when we can’t see …

I’ve never actually been overseas, and Gaz has only been to Bali, so it was a pretty crazy experience getting to feel like you were actually flying over all these cities.

At the end we did a few tricks, barrel-rolled the whole plane 360 degrees and didn’t crash.

So back in the real world, we flew over to Perth on Wednesday to play West Coast this weekend. All the boys were pretty confident that if there was an issue with the pilots, Gaz and I would be right to step into the cockpit and look after things.

We learnt in the simulator that you’ve got to stay calm and hold your nerve to be a pilot - the same lessons we learnt in the win over Essendon last week.  It was positive knowing we came back from a four goal deficit, it showed courage and gives us a lot of belief going into this weekend’s game.

West Coast have had a good start to the year so it’s a big test for us - and hopefully we’ll be flying!