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Gearing up for the World Games – Aussie Style!

Editor’s Note: LAS welcomes Glenn Morley back to the site with some updates on the Aussie teams prep for the rapidly upcoming World Games.  Glenn covered the Hawai’i Invitational tournament for us last October and @ConnorWilsonLAS used to play against Glenn down in Perth back in 2001.  He’s a good lax dude and the Australians are facing a real uphill battle to take home the Gold… Let’s see where they’re at right now.

Whats happening Lax All Stars?  Well, its finally happened!  After 2 years of tournaments, squad selections, trial camps and training camps, the Aussie Men’s National Lacrosse team is heading to Manchester, England for the FIL World Games!

I am going to try and check in as much as I can during the tournament, giving some insights on all the happenings with the games, cafeteria food and life at the Tournament.  I thought I would start with a little run-down on how the Aussie team got to this point – enjoy. You will also get a sneak peak at some of the Aussie swag!  (Editor’s Note: We always love that!)

Adidas has hooked the Aussies up with uniforms and padding. The helmets are Cascade.

We can start the story in October 2008, when the Initial Australian Squad of 50+ players were selected following the National Championships. Following that initial selection, we all got our training programs for lifting and running before meeting up in Adelaide for another National Championship tournament followed by a 4 day selection camp in July of 2009.

After this camp, the squad was trimmed to 34 and we got some more running and lifting programs (there is a theme developing here).   Although I did have a little break from training for the fun and sun of the Hawaii Invitational.

The final selection camp was in early January and featured some fun games against visiting NCAA D3 Haverford College – it was great having these guys come down for the games because as I am sure you can imagine, Australia is a long way from the other Blue Division Countries (Editor’s Note: Blue Division countries are US, Canada, Iroquois, England, Australia and Japan), and arranging for competitive warm up matches can be tough.

Following this camp the final team of 23 was announced and luckily my name was on it. The training, running and lifting continued across the country as players trained in small groups based out of their home City’s.  There are really only 7 truly major cities in Australia and of those, only 3 (Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne have a lot of lacrosse).

We took advantage of the Easter holidays to get together for a training camp, which was great for developing some team chemistry, and the training running and lifting continued.

Now the never ending story continues to this morning, i got my bag packed up, my shoes tied tight, and I cant wait to get on the flight – its 11 hours Perth to Dubai, where we meet the rest of the team for the charge into Manchester, the Sharks are circling – the training is done bring on the WORLD GAMES!

That's a lot of Aussie gear! Glad Glenn has 4 twigs though! 2 of them look familiar!

Contact LAS at info@lacrosseallstars.com with questions and feel free to drop some comments below showing your support or disdain for the laxers from Down Under!