Fitness motivation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GFyIEoZOok
some DOPE hill training in there.. damn.
i want to try hills again.. need to heal up first tho
Yeah it's a pretty cool documentary!
The last time my rugby club won a Premier Grade championship was in 2007 and half our players that year were Fijians. They're not as big as Samoans or Tongans but they are usually taller and speedsters with a lot of skill and heart. I was playing U18's back then but at the time my club
https://www.facebook.com/Souths-Rugby-Union-239919789376/ had a great team. Our President at the time was a New Zealand businessman and he recruited Fijians from overseas and we used to pay them and he would provide them with jobs at his factory. Even today those players you saw in the documentary are on $US 15,000 a year and they are World Seven Championship winners and Olympic Gold medallists
http://fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=330616We've had Fijian international representatives play for us and I've been fortunate to play with 3 of them and they were hands down the best players I've ever played alongside with.
Unfortunately the President left to go interstate in 2011 and since then our club has turned from being a club that recruited international players and was one of the best of the best in the state to a drinking club with a rugby problem. Our President since 2011 has been a Maori guy who is also a businessman but he doesn't believe in recruiting. From a business point of view he's done a great job gathering sponsors and creating social events etc., but from a rugby perspective our Premier Grade and Reserve grades have got worse and worse each year since 2011. Take tonight for example. It's pre-season training and we have teams in Premier Grade, Reserve Grade and 4th Grade. There's 22 players in a rugby team so we should have at least 66 players out and about. However, only 13 players including myself turned out tonight so our club is definitely in dire straights and that's why it's been really hard for me to come out and commit since 2012/2013 (along with job issues, depression and alcohol abuse that I was going through) because it's just a social club these days.
The only positive thing is this year we have a new coach from New Zealand and he knows his stuff, but all the players I was playing with pre-2013 have either quit (lack of interest or retirement) or moved interstate to play in more competitive comps. The sad thing is we don't even have juniors coming up as they either quit or desert us to move to other clubs that have a better culture. But yeah hopefully we can get some more people out to trainings and turn the culture of the club around and become a force to be reckoned with again- Getting a few Fijian guns would help