IT was our day off last week and it was a chilly day but the sun was out and I thought it would be nice if me, Jess, the baby and our friend Paul went to the park to have a kick.

I lent Paul some boots and we had a nice kick around and then I noticed some young boys coming to the park as well. They were having a kick and then I realised it was a team, the under 13 Maroubra Saints.

One of the fathers came over as we had met once before, when I went on a school visit as part of the work we do each week with TeamSWANS.

We said hello and then I thought I’d go over and ask if I could join them for half an hour of training.

The coach introduced me to all the young players and then we did a warm up, lane work, and I just stuck at the end of the group.

Most of them were trying to boot the hell out of the ball, kicking with the wind, and it was going over their team-mates heads, so I told them that it was better if they kicked it softly and lobbed it up and put in on their mate’s chest. Better to put it out in front than make everyone run around to chase the ball.

We did some work on ground balls and marking and made them run around. But they were not training with any intensity so I said if you’re not going to train with purpose then don’t train at all.

You have to have fun, get up and get excited about training so they did that and they were smiling and happy.

We did a square drill, kicking it around to all four points but they weren’t talking enough to each other so we worked on that too. I said if you know his name, shout out loud and point out where you want the ball delivered.

It reminded me a bit of when I was a kid training back in Bunbury, at Carey Park, but I had a lot of cousins in my team. Half the team was my cousins. We used to have scratch matches and we all just wanted the footy and wanted to kick goals!

Nothing changes really!

But it was good to get out and relax by having a kick of the footy last week. I also did it another day, got off my bike on the way home and had a few shots at goal, torpedoes and everything.

You’ve got to find ways to stay relaxed because footy is intense. Last Sunday against Fremantle the effort in the last quarter was outstanding but we have to do that from the start of the game this week against the Western Bulldogs at home at the SCG.