What do you do the day after a great win on a Thursday night at the SCG? Rest. swim, eat, repeat. Getting to sleep after a night game is a difficult task. The rush of adrenaline you generate in the game, coupled with the soreness you feel at its end make a good night’s sleep hard to get. I wear a sleep ring that helps measure sleep data every night, things like total sleep, amount of deep sleep, REM sleep, and how quickly you fall asleep.
The data helps you learn ways to maximize and regulate your sleeping patterns, there is no better form of recovery than sleep. All the ice baths, the massages, and the stretching sessions are the icing on the cake, sleep is the cake. We headed down to Bondi mid-morning in our allocated groups for a swim. The water was amazingly clear, the waves providing a great chance to have a body surf.
No matter how sore and tired you are you seem to always find room to compete. Mark Blicavs and I play best of five at a lot of things, today it was the longest body surf on a wave. Simple rules; start together and see who catches the wave closest to shore. Experience and luck end the contest with me slightly ahead.
The afternoon provided another chance to sleep before dinner and a chat with our non-selected AFL players, who played Collingwood in a practice game earlier in the day. We are going to need a big squad of players over the coming weeks, as injury and fatigue take their toll.
Having a strong and healthy list with players ready to come in and play their role will be as important as any reason for success. Sam Simpson was a great example for us last night. We have a team meeting at dinner to discuss the next part of our road trip. The restrictions our going to stringent, rigorous protocols a necessary part of the journey ahead.
The bumps will come but we will remain agile. So much planning has gone on behind the scenes between the AFL and state governments to get us to this point. We all understand the health implications of failing to adhere to the required procedures.
Like society at large, prosperity relies on everyone doing the right thing. We must not grovel in pity at what we may face, rather remember that every occasion presents an opportunity, if we choose to view it that way. ‘We are the masters of our fates, the captains of our souls.’