Congrats to JRC for your success so far this season. Men's team making it to the semi's and ladies are on their way to the finals again! Good job!
We have played now 3 games of the Elitserien and things are going really great for us, better than expected actually. We came to the Elitserien as the underdogs, barely made it throught and lost lot of games early in the Premilier season. Well now things are different. During the little brake beetween Premilier and Elite series, we started to work really hard, we have been running and rucking and tackling like animals the past month or so and it's clearly paying off now. We won the first Elitserien game against Malmö 10-0, second game we won against Vänersborg with clear numbers 46-12 and last saturday we took one point from the current swedish champions, Göteborg. Score was 7-7 and it came quite close that we didn't win the hole game. Göteborg had won Exiles week before, so taking one point from them was a huge deal for us.
So now we have 3 games left in the Elitserien and it looks like we are heading to the semi's. In the semi's teams play 2 games, 1 home and 1 away. From the semi's 2 best teams make it to the finals, that's again 2 games; one home and one away. So hopefully we have at least five games left and if we make it all the way through, we still have 7 games.
There has been some changes in the squat. We needed to speed up the back line a little bit and I am playing as a fly half now. It's been really interesting challenge because that's the one position I have never played before. But I have clear instructions from my coach, my job is to run to the ball with my full speed and make rest of the back line run too. I can challenge the opponents fly half as much as I want and try to side step or offload her. On the defence I'm trying to put as much pressure as I can and lead the defence line press up fast and hard. It's mentally hard to learn new position in the middle of the game season, but at the same time it's cool and fun to learn new stuff. I'm so glad I have spent lot of time thinking about the back patterns during the summer so now I don't have to start learning them, I can just concentrate of doing them from fly half position. I belive that especially the back players should be ready to play whatever position in the back line and not just focus on one. It means more work but eventually if you work hard enought, it can only make you a stronger player.
Games are making the rythm to our week. We play on Saturdays and Sunday is for recovery. Monday I have physio if needed, I do passing drills with scrum half coach, and after that we do fitness training with the squat. Tuesday is for gym and personal skills, Wednesday we correct the things that went wrong in the last game and we usually do lots of rucking and tackling too. Thursdays, it's time to get ready for the next game, we do more unit work and team run of course. Friday is for getting mentally ready, going through the game plan and some light passing /kicking at the pitch. And Saturday, it's game time again! That's pretty much our week schedule right now, of course during day times we do our own passing or kicking training (if we are not too knackered from our last game) and I have to watch and analyse lots of games now so I can undestand more about fly half position. Luckily for me the Tri Nations is on and we have sky tv at the club house.
Hopefully everything is going good back home, talk to you soon my friends
Hugs, Tanja