Week 2

Contrary to what most of you are thinking, the weather has been pretty abysmal so far. For people who have never been down under, the general consensus
(me being no different before I came here!) is that the sun is constantly shining, barbies are always on the go and the chicks walk around in very little! In reality, that’s not the case.

However, I seem to be feeling the average weather conditions a hell of a lot more than the Aussies, which doesn't help the view in Australia that the stereotypical 'pommie' is a whinger!

Moving on swiftly, I'm into my second week now and still really enjoying myself. Monday was a fairly busy day, starting off with lunch with the coach Phil
Lovell and then meeting the owner of Saxon Sports, Paul Attfield. He was an awesome guy with a very dry sense of humour and not afraid to get stuck into me about being English! After being abused for an hour or so I felt it was time to start up a gym membership and begin winter training. I managed to blag myself a
student membership which works out at only about 20 quid a month so I can’t complain about that. In the evening Paul decided to take a few of the guys out
for dinner at a pub up Mount Dandenong.

The crew included myself, Phil, Brent 'Rexy' Kremer, Paul and the owner of Aero cricket called Roger. Another great thing about Melbourne is the price of food. The size of the steak I had would quite easily be worth £20 back home but it was only $25 (roughly a tenner I think).

I tried to keep myself busy for the next few days but to be honest I wasn't really doing a lot. The main part of my day was the gym. By no means am I the biggest guy on the county circuit so by the end of my time in Australia I want to come back a lot fitter and stronger than when I left. On the Wednesday I went for a bowling machine session with the Second Eleven keeper Jared, which seemed to do me the world of good because on Thursday i felt a million dollars in the nets which is unheard of for me!

After that a  few of the guys went our for Jamil's birthday. Most of the life-long Outlaws fans will know Jamil as Basher Hassan's son. He's a very capable
cricketer and a hard worker who's set up his own personal training business in Melbourne. About 10 of us went out for a Thai meal (the first one I’ve ever
had!), had a few beers and met a few interesting characters!

Friday was a much more action packed day. The 1st grade captain 'Rexy' offered me a day’s work painting. Now I haven’t done a day’s manual labour in quite a while so the thought of it the night before was quite worrying! But there I was, up at 6am the
next morning and actually looking forward to a hard day’s work. I haven’t really had a chance to talk about Rex but he's got to be one of the nicest guys I've
ever met, really down to earth and cares a lot about Croydon. The sort of guy you don’t mind busting a gut for on the field or helping in any way possible
off the field.

Somehow I got through my day’s work unscathed and having got up at 6am and I was looking forward to hitting the sack fairly early before cricket on Saturday!

I had a good hit on Thursday at training so I was fairly confident going into the game that I as in decent form. They asked me to bat number three, which I haven’t done in a quite a while but I wasn’t too fussed. I got in around 20-1 after 8 overs and as I
had suspected, the wicket was a beauty. I was making very good progress, 46 off around 50 balls until one just held up on me and I went a bit hard at it,
getting caught at short cover.

Obviously at the time I was gutted and rather annoyed at myself for getting in on a good wicket and giving it way, but looking back it was my first hit in a game in well over a month and I was pretty happy with the way I played. We were cruising at 215-5, needing just 17 for a well deserved victory. Cue disaster. We lost 4 wickets for 6 runs and I think at that stage everybody was expecting the worst. The last pair were Timmy Newcomb and Steve Wright, who both batted exceptionally and saw us over the finish line in the last over.

Saturday night was an interesting one. One of the guys, Cameron, was getting married soon so the guys decided to set up a mock wedding, which 70 odd people turned up to. It wasn’t just any old mock wedding however. He was getting married to the club coach Phil Lovell, which obviously involved him dressing up as a woman and to put it bluntly, he's not short of a body hair or two! Seeing him prancing round in a backless dress was a sight that will probably stick with me quite vividly for the rest of my life!

I've got some great snaps from that night so as soon as I sort my camera out I'll show you all what I went through.

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