FORGET, NOT FORGIVE
Flames burn but it’s time to move on
TONIGHT’s match against Sydney isn’t a revenge game for me. The Flames did a good job to win the championship last season and now they’ve got the target on their backs and we know how that feels.
But I’m motivated before every game anyway because I am a competitor and I think all the girls feel the same way.
Sydney are pretty much identical to last year except for bringing KatieRae Ebzery back into their mix and Leilani Mitchell not playing for them.
They’re going to be tough, especially when they’ve had that core together now and won a championship, but it’s a new season and a lot of new talents have come into the league.
It’s a different team to what we had last year and we’ve got a lot of new faces so they wouldn’t have experienced what we did last year.
I guess that’s one good thing about leaving the past in the past: you don’t dwell on it and you can move forward to the new season.
We’re going to make sure we do a job on Sydney, especially at home, and try to run away with a big ‘ W’.
It’ll be great to see our new import Sydney Wiese make her Fire debut tonight. She’s had two training sessions with us now and she seems really nice off the court and works hard on the court.
I think bringing her in is just another strength. She’s a sharpshooter and our guards run so deep so it’s really tough for other teams to defend that.
Once we deal with the Flames tonight we travel to Dandenong tomorrow morning so it’s an extremely short turnaround.
But it’s just about taking each game as it comes. I think we’ve become accustomed to the travel situation because it’s always two flights to get somewhere and a bit of distance for us, but nobody really whinges about it. You just get on with it and do what you’ve got to do.
Claudia Brassard and the coaches and our conditioning coach Brent Gorris have worked together to find what the best way is to handle everything with our travel schedule, recovery, and training.
They monitor training and if we’re feeling good then we’ll keep plotting along, but if people are getting tired and need a bit more recovery they’re going to be able to have that leeway as well. I think the coaches have done a really good job just sorting that all out for us and making sure that we’re ready to perform each game regardless of travel and the turnaround time.