• Thursday evening - scoring a closed match between Australia and Scotland U19s/development squad.  This was Jen's first chance to see the Aussies at work.  Their passages of play up the court were slick and fast scoring over 100 goals in the 60 minutes that they played.  Although Norma Plummer did say the girls looked a little rusty and had some things to work on before taking on Scotland on the Sunday.

• Friday evening  - Jen attended the Civic reception held at Glasgow City Chambers and enjoyed discussions with Norma Plummer and her girls. Although Jen admits she was more than a little starstruck when Norma approached her for a chat. 

• Saturday morning - Jen went to the Gorbals Leisure Centre where Netball Scotland's Pathways athletes attended for a session with the Aussies.  This was the first time that Jen was able to watch the Aussies training and commented that everything that they did was simple but well executed, counting a total of 1 dropped ball in a 30 minute period.  The Aussie players then split up and took the Pathways athletes for 5 mins skills sessions.  The athletes and coaches took a lot from this session and learned a lot of new ideas to help with their playing/coaching.

• Sunday - Australia then took on Scotland in the first of their test matches with Jen scoring this game also.  Fiona, Geraldine and Coach Linda also attended this match and were suitably impressed with the standard of play.  Australia winning convincingly .  However, Scotland did well to keep the Diamonds under 80 goals.

• Monday morning - Jen attended the Alistair McCoist sports complex in East Kilbride for another chance to learn from Norma and the girls.  The session was a similar set up to that on the Saturday, but this time it was Glasgow and South Lanarkshire district U15/17 squads who had the chance to benefit from being coached by the Australians.

• Monday evening - Jen was invited to this session as a coach from the High Performance Coaching Group.  This was the coaches chance to learn as much as they could from Norma and the squad.  The first part of the session involved observing the Australian's training session and taking notes on key areas identified by Scotland's National Coach, Denise Holland.  he coaches then fed back their observations to Denise in a small question and answer session.  The group was then joined by Norma Plummer who answered questions from the Scottish coaches.  Jen felt extremely priveleged to be part of this session and was thoroughly impressed with Norma's attiude to coach development.  Norma also spoke of losing not being part of 'the Australian way'.

• Tuesday Evening - Jen again scored Scotland's final test agains the Aussie's at the Alistair McCoist Sports complex.

If all of that wasn't enough, Jen then drove down to Liverpool on Friday 19th February (still caught up in 'Aussie Fever') to watch the first of Australia's first test matches against England.  This was a close fought game, with England just taking the win 41-40.  However, Australia went on to take the next 2 tests matches 53-48 and 45-43 to win the series.  And as Norma said before, losing just isn't part of the Australian way!

         Jen with her Aussie top and                                  The Aussie huddle!

       the Northern Thunder mascot

Go Aussies! (unless they play Scotland in which case its Gooooo Scotland LOL).

Jen

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