LONESTARS YET TO ALIGN FOR COUPLE
GEELONG- RAISED David Bryant should be coaching an Australian rules team in his adopted city of Houston.
Instead, he is stranded in his hometown because of coronavirus restrictions as he and his wife, Sonia Lovel, plot their return to America.
Bryant is living with his father-in-law in Highton and juggling his responsibilities with the United States Australian Football League and club Houston Lonestars, which he joined as a player in 2010 and is now the coach.
International border closures have left Bryant to remote coach about 14,000km from his American home.
Bryant and Lovel returned to Australia in early March for a wedding and planned to stay for a couple of weeks, but three months on the couple still haven’t left.
“There was certainly no noise of lockdowns at that point,” Bryant said.
“It was certainly something that was spreading around. We weren’t sure where it was heading but in the two weeks or so I was here, or planned to be here, it went from, ‘ COVID-19, what is this thing?’ to lockdown.
“My wife and I got stuck here. I was supposed to fly out the 20th or something like that and didn’t make it out after the wedding.”
Bryant played a season in the seniors with St Joseph’s before moving to Melbourne for university.
His work as a project manager with BHP took him to the States 10 years ago, which is when he first linked with the Lonestars.
As well as his coaching, he provides advice to the league’s clubs as its development co-ordinator.
Bryant said he had delegated to his coaching panel to help guide the list of 45 players — and a women’s team — during the shutdown.
“In this period now, we would normally be training and playing local games against teams like Austin, Dallas, Louisiana and Oklahoma — anywhere in a reasonable driving distance,” he said.
“What we’ve had to do (is) cancel all games and all training. What we’ve been doing is running a weekly virtual training session … (and) doing individual skills or a fitness challenge.
“We do what’s called 1000 touches, which is running the ball through your legs, around your back and all that 1000 times, so within about 10 minutes you can touch the ball a lot of times — things you can do on your own, as well as providing videos to give them something to analyse or look at.”
The USAFL has 46 teams and about 1500 registered players, mostly made up of Americans and a small percentage of expats.
The season is in hiatus but Bryant hopes it starts in some form later this year.
American YouTube channel The Pat McAfee Show brought some attention to the AFL as world sport grinded to a halt.
Bryant said there was growing interest in the competition.
“The league’s been around for 23 years in the US but it’s still very early in its journey,” he said.
“The level of awareness across the scale of the US, the general population, is very low. Unfortunately we fall in the shadows of rugby union, which has been the growth sport in the US.
“We’re not the household sporting name and rugby has become that. We’re basically trying to emulate what they did and that took them 35 years to get to the point where they were accepted.”