From the Head of Sport

Welcome back to everyone in what is an extraordinary time for us all. Firstly, I hope that all families are healthy and coping well in this current environment. Our College staff have been sending out numerous resources and offers of assistance for those who need it so please do not hesitate to reach out to us if you require support.

This certainly extends to sport. It is funny how the absence or removal of something can often make you realise how much you miss it and need it! As a father of four sons, I can definitely understand and sympathise with any family who may be finding the isolation from activity challenging at times!! Boys need to burn energy!

Since before the holidays, we have been very proactive in the sports department to provide ways for our students to remain active in this lockdown. We have been uploading exercise challenges and workouts of the day through our Instagram pages and our HPE department have also incorporated several fitness challenges in our Stile HPE lessons – a great initiative!

In this newsletter, we have continued to develop these ideas by providing our sports that would currently be in action – cross country, football and rugby union – with a weekly training schedule to follow. These programs will continue each week until we return to full school routines. We encourage all students to engage in these programs as a starting point for maintaining and increasing their fitness. They are a basic guideline incorporating correct warm-ups and skill progressions. You are very welcome to do more!

From next week we will be utilising MCA students as examples of how to perform our skills and incorporate some challenges.

The Future – still a lot is unknown

We have been hearing encouraging reports recently about how a gradual return to normality is a real possibility sooner than we thought. Therefore, the possibility of commencing some sport in Term 3 this year is looking very likely. Fingers crossed! With the NRL returning soon, some of our sanity can be restored with some sport to watch on the TV, but what was most encouraging to hear was that the ARU has proposed June 1 for a return to community rugby and July 1 as possible playing dates. If our current trends continue and other codes explore their own method of returning to play, this could be a very positive outcome and will allow our senior students, in particular, the opportunities they thoroughly deserve with games this year.

The important thing for our college is that our students are ready to go when the green light is given. The suggested programs in this newsletter, along with the ideas in the HPE curriculum, will go a long way in supporting this.

Photos/Video – Please send us through any photos or videos of you performing the programs so that we can upload these to our social media pages and include in our newsletter.

If you require any support with these programs or would like to discuss further training ideas please contact the Coordinators of our sports listed below:

• Strength and Conditioning Coordinator – Mr Simon Price - prices@marash.qld.edu.au
• Cross Country – Mr Matt Ingram - ingramm@marash.qld.edu.au
• Football – Mr Jamie Morgan - morganj@marash.qld.edu.au
• and Mr Terry Quain - quaint@marash.qld.edu.au
• Rugby Union – Mr David Miles - milesd@marash.qld.edu.au

MCA Football 1st XI and Rugby 1st XV classic matches – start this Saturday!

This Saturday, May 2, we are launching the first of our “classic matches” for both football and rugby union. Similar to the idea adopted by Fox Sports with their classic matches we are going to be streaming matches through YouTube at what would be the kick-off times for Round 1 of the season this weekend.

12:15pm              1st XI Football

2:15pm                 1st XV Rugby

All students will be sent the YouTube link later in the week and in our current isolation, we encourage as many people as possible to tune in!

The recording of AIC matches to a decent standard of viewing, particularly in football, has only developed in recent times so we have a narrow selection of games but there are plenty of entertaining ones to choose from. Most of the games currently chosen are from the last decade and even more recent for football.

Older footage - I encourage anyone who may have “older” footage of an exciting Ashgrove 1st XV or 1st XI match to get in touch with me so that we may consider the streaming of that game. Imagine having footage of some of the teams from the 80’s or 90’s to play!

Mr David Miles

Head of Sport