And that’s a wrap. My second season abroad comes to an end. Although I haven’t blogged for a while, in many ways I have been blogging, just not through traditional methods (if you received a telepathic blog post from me than ignore the previous sentence). Perhaps if you’re lucky enough you will get a postcard from me? But considering it cost like $3 for a stamp, it would seem way more practical to send a free message online with a photograph but that’s not what I am going to talk about in my last blog. I don’t even want to waste time and sentences on saying how much better my blog is than Darcy Taig’s, as it is very clear the proof is in the pudding.
What have I been up to in Sweden? Well, over christmas I went to Barcelona and Madrid which was really really cool. It was great to see the sun in the middle of the dark Swedish winter, get a break then come back for the second part of the season. Unfortunately for me neither of those things (the break, or the sun) would help with the second half of the season in terms of results. We struggled in the second half of the season. Due to a variety of reasons, including at times performance, we also had a lot of injuries and players missing. Circumstances meant one of our pro wing Canadians had to leave with 2 months left in the season. Although we did pick up an extra Canadian over christmas, we managed to keep up our Canadian quota to at least 2 Canadians. Our captain and left side pulled his hamstring, and our Swedish wing player also missed a few games due to his beach volleyball commitments. So what did that leave us? With only 1 ‘traditional’ left side, although we did a good job of filling that spot, with our libero and middles spending sometime on the wing, which worked actually kind of well. We finished the season 5 wins and 21 losses, which put us in 9th place out 10 teams. This put us in the ‘qualification’ series. This series is where the bottom placed eliteseries teams, play against the teams who want to play for promotion (from the second highest division). This series would put us in a single round robin against 3 other teams who wanted to play in the eliteseries. To be honest, before the start of the series I had no idea how we would go. I’d never seen anyone from the second highest division play, so it was tough to know how challenging it would be. But the whole preparation was focused on our side of the net, and it all paid off. We won over the course of 3 weekends, all 3 of our matches, and all 3-0 (after all, 3 is the magic number). Some of the teams were clearly weaker, but we had some notable individual performances. Special mention to Anton, who in a 3 set match scored 8 aces (with a total of 19 points for that match).
So we swept the qualification series, which feels like the best situation of a bad situation (being in the qualification series in the first place, and not making playoffs).
So that’s all she wrote (hey that’s the title of this entry!) for the 2015/16 season. Now that matches are finished it is a cool chance to reflect a bit. It was a disappointing result, individually I didn’t perform how I would have liked. As a team, we definitely showed some really good signs at times, but never in important moments. Having said that, there was a lot to learn. Anyone who plays sports, knows you do learn a lot from losing, and this season there has been a bunch of stuff to take on board. Things from coaching staff, other players and just self analysis. Hopefully I can use this stuff, and get better, If not, then she’ll be right.
Also worth a mention, anyone who remembers a minute intricacy of my previous post knows and understand the number one rule in Sodertalje. That is, if you serve or spike under the net, you must bake a pie. And man oh man, in the second half of the season we must have had at least 1 pie being brought to practice a week. Then as the season got closer to finishing, and people still owed, by my rough calculations over the last 2 weeks of the season, someone brought baked goods to 8 of our last 10 sessions. And for those curious, yes at some stage I was a victim. I’d like to think my serve made it past the 3m line on my own side, but there is no video evidence. So what would an Australian in Sweden bake for his Swedish/Canadian team? You guessed it guys (no not pavlova), I made some lamingtons! Although met with a lot of questions of ‘what the hell is this?’ and ‘is there kangaroo in this?’ I think I did a good enough job that people have a strong impression of such a traditional Australian food. Now, my pieces of lamington weren’t exactly perfect squares, some would even call them just large crumbs for pieces but that’s not something that keeps me up at night.
What else have I been doing I here you ask? Well here comes probably the response no one would expect. As weird as it sounds to say I’m a professional volleyball player in Sweden, and I can now say just as weirdly that I am a teacher in Sweden. Yes, you heard correctly. While I’ve been in Sweden, I started doing some substitute work at some International Schools, then I got offered a full time position as a PE/Math/Science teacher at a school in Stockholm. So now I’m teaching PE to grade 1, 2, 3 and 6, Math to grade 6 and Science to grade 6 and 8. So by day I’m collared, ironed (well sometimes) button shirt wearing Mr. Bennett telling kids to do their math homework and not forgetting to bring their books to class. Then by night, a professional volleyball player. It’s a great combination, giving that it keeps me very occupied during the days, and also it’s a really cool experience to work with kid from 7 years old - 14 years old. While I am still figuring out how to exactly teach, what the Swedish curriculum is and what comes out of Swede’s mouth when they speak the Swedish language hopefully I am indirectly shedding some gnarly knowledge onto some young minds Some interesting things about the Swedish education system. Homework and detentions are illegal in the Swedish education system. So what do you do when kids misbehave? I’m still trying to figure this out although no one in Sweden has a concrete answer.
Now with a break from volleyball, I can enjoy the sun (well the glimpses of the sun), some much needed R & R as I look forward to the 2016/17 season. To see where that will lead me, or indeed what is the next chapter in my blog. Maybe a special recipe, or maybe some Swedish language lessons? Linford is principal for a day? I still haven’t decided, but I think this is a nice brief 1267 word summary of what has been on the hip hap for me.
I know I always make this thing about me, but for once how are you doing? Hopefully good. 
Peace out.
Stay in the know.
Mr. Bennett.

So here I am, 3 months into my Swedish adventure. It's been an interesting journey so far, mainly based around the fun in trying to figure Swedish people out. They're a great kind of people but they have some interesting quirks that I'll delve into later. But first the volleyball. 
The season kicked off on October 4th, with a nice home win to start the season off. That was a promising sign, however since then our results haven't been to good on paper, although we are improving. Unfortunately we lost some close games to some good teams, had some bad games in the mix as well, and our record stands at 1-7 (or maybe it's 1-8 (I'm not 100% sure).The results suck. But we're on the way up. My season in The Netherlands started off in a similar fashion, and a really valuable lesson I learnt there was just how important it can be to keep things process based, and even if you're losing how it's still valuable to improve technically, which is easy to lose sight of if you're just worried about losing. The last 4-5 matches we've increased our level of play each time, with our latest loss only being a 17-15 5th set loss. The results aren't flowing but spirits are still high and we all know that our break through win is coming. And when it does it will be oh so sweet, sweeter than a visit to the largest IKEA in Sweden to go along with the delicious Swedish meatballs served up, which was a great cultural and culinary experience I had the privilege of undertaking.
Although things can be results based, one thing that is an even bigger part of living abroad is the cultural experience. I'm happy to report I can now count to 20 in Svenska (although I'm a bit iffy on 20). Swedish does just sound like a mono tone gibberish with very few vowels but that's probably just my opinion. They have 3 different 'o' sounds that I know of plus a few different 'a' sounds as well, none of which I can say correctly but it's fun trying to learn. 
Living in Sweden has it's advantage and disadvantages. An unfortunate disadvantage is the dark and depressing weather that occurs about 94% of the time. As most people, when I see the sun it usually brightens my day. This is not possible in Sweden. The sun rises around 8am (it's rising later and later everyday), and setting today at 3pm (and yes it's setting earlier everyday too). Mix that in with the fact that the days are usually really cloudy, rainy and cold you don't get much sun. So for that I excuse the Swedish people for constantly complaining about the weather. My people tell me it's only getting darker and darker and colder. So all I can do is take my vitamin D tablets and hope for the best. 
Here are some cool other things I'm learning about Sweden and Swedish people:
- for a country that has a dark winter I'm seeing way to many people wearing sandals indoors. Yes they wear different shoes outside, then switch over to sandals once inside but I don't like it. Also because socks and sandals look ridiculous. I assume these are the same people who travel on aeroplane in sandals or things, both as bad as each other 
- timing. Perhaps of German influence, the Swedo's love precise timing. I haven't heard any Swedish person say 'yeah, let's meet at around 15:00'. Instead it's 'let's meet at 15:00' and you damn well better be sure you're on time. If someone asks you how long it takes to get to work, you will always get a really specific answer. 'It takes about 35 minutes on the bus and train, but door to door with walking precisely 42.7 minutes with moderate traffic flow' is a common Swedish type answer. Also coupled with the fact a 40 minute commute is seen as a long commute. It's hard to explain in Melbourne if I can get anywhere in 40 minutes it's probably been a low traffic day. 
- thou swede must recycle: recycling is a complicated institution here. One bin for recyclables and one bin for rubbish? I thought I was good at recycling but apparently not. Basically every household in Sweden is a religious recycler. You put your food and organic waste in a special green bag, which gets put in the same wheelie bin as your normal waste (which you put in a normal bag). You then collect your glass recyclables to be placed in some special glass bin, but putting all your papers together ? No way dude. You have to keep your soft plastics (like milk cartons) and hard plastics (still not sure what a hard plastic is) away from each other, while your normal paper is in a different bag. I've attached a photo of a serious of different kinds of rubbish/recycle bins to prove I'm not making this up. On a related note if you ever get invited into a Swedish persons home and want a laugh, try throwing something that's recyclable into their normal rubbish bin. They'll probably have a small heart attack 
- quite number of public buses have seat belts 
- if you want to use a bathroom outside of your own home , chances are you'll have to pay $1. Yes, a country that has around 480 days of paid m/paternity leave, free healthcare and free university education for all it's people, makes you pay to use public toilets. 
- I tried to promise myself I wouldn't write to much about coffee. If you know me you know I could write about 10 pages on why it's so bad here but I'll keep it very very simple. The number one type of coffee consumed here is black filtered coffee. Anyone who enjoys drinking black filtered coffee are the exact same as the kind of people who enjoy drinking instant coffee. It makes no sense to me and you're wrong. 
Hopefully I've given some good insight into Swedish volleyball and culture. My team has 4 matches left until our Christmas break, so hopefully some wins come our way as an early Christmas present. 
Post edit update: last night we won 3 - 0 at home. Marking our first win in 2 months and second of the season. Damn that feels good.

I'm in the opening weeks of my 2nd season abroad in Europe as a volleyball player. After finishing my first season in April, I spent some time travelling the world, eventually headed back to sunny Melbourne and began the offseason period. It's a terrible time because everything is unknown. You do not have a contract for next season, while you wait around to hopefully receive one but you have no idea when it's coming. Which means you could be living in Melbourne for 3 months or 15 months, you just don't know. But thankfully I got incredibly lucky. Towards the end of June it finally happened. As I rolled over in my bed at 4am I noticed my phone lit up. Curious as to what could be happening at 4am I took a look at my screen and there it was: an offer to continue my volleyball career, this time in Sweden. Naturally I could not go back to sleep. I spent the next few hours speaking to some people very close to me, to help me read the contract (this contract was English, unlike my last one which was in Dutch) just to check over the minor details and make sure it was a good situation. It all looked good, so I signed it, sent it off and a few days later the club did the same and it became official. 
And so it was. New team. New coach. New league. New city. New country. New language. But no matter what changes, the one constant is volleyball. 
My new team is Sodertelge VolleyBoll Club. Located in the small town of 'Södertälje' (or Soda for short), which has population of around 100, 000. I don't know why the town had a 'j' in it but the team has a 'g' in it. I guess it's one of those weird Swedish things. But I'm only a 45 minute train ride from downtown Stockholm which is beautiful, also doubling up as the  capital and biggest city in Sweden. 
I'm about to tick over to my first month now here, and I'm very happy with the situation I've landed in. The guys on the team and coaching staff are motivated. Practices have been good so far, but also frustrating. Every part of you wants to hit the ground running but in reality it's hard. It takes time to get adjusted, both to how things will work on the court and off the court. The connection with the hitters is coming along, not as fast as I'd like but it never is. 
We've done a lot of pre-season a work. I landed in Sweden on a Monday. And that Friday night we headed to a holiday house near a lake for a weekend getaway with the team. Especially early on it's important to do some team bonding. We even split up into groups and tackled a series 'escape rooms'. The best way to describe these are essentially riddles (yes in Swedish) in a room with a bunch of obstacles and weird ropes and other fun playground equipment to climb. Obviously my group had the most points however someone lost our bit of paper, then amazingly the team who tallied the points won. It was largely controversial, and will remain so. 
We also participated in an age old activity I haven't done much in the last few years : we ran. Altogether around 5km, which any volleyballer knows is torture. Team rules got discussed. It's now official that anytime someone serves under the net at practice anytime during the season, they have to bake the whole team a cake. There's only been one culprit so far so thanks very much for your delicious treats Anton. 
My Svenska (the Swedish word for Swedish funnily enough) is coming along pretty good. I can count to 10, and order in most cafés what I want, even if I have to guess what some ingredients are. Avoiding horse meat is probably my only real mission right now. Just for some cultural info I have mastered possibly the most important word in the Swedish language: fika. This is the Swedish word to 'have a cup of coffee with someone', essentially a more social, caffeinated and less carcinogenic version of a 'smoko'. At any stage of the working day, it is perfectly acceptable to stop your job, take a 'fika' to unwind then head back to work. I love this concept except for one important fact for anyone who ever wants to live in Sweden: for a country who prides itself on having a cup of coffee to socialise and enjoy life, the beverage they serve up for 'coffee' is disgusting. I've been trying to find coffee that doesn't taste like cat piss. So far I've found a hipster cafe in Stockholm that charges $7 AUD for a Swedish version of a 'flat white' (a concept that's hard to find at most cafés) that tastes about the same quality as a $1 coffee from 7-11. I hope the coffee situation will improve but I'm doubtful; I went 8 months in The Netherlands without a good coffee and it's looking like nothing is changing anytime soon. 
Aside from that life is pretty relaxed. Everyone from the club has been awesome in helping me get settled. The team practices 4 evenings per week which leaves a lot of free time. With the Fall TV season starting the US, I'll definitely be able to keep up to date with Homeland, Louie etc, while at some stage re-watch The Office. 
The first league match is on October 4th. There are somewhere between 18-24 regular season matches that finished in mid-March when playoffs start. So games will come fast early on, so right now the focus is ironing out some kinks, and come October get out there and to paraphrase the great Rasheed Wallace 'play hard'. 
Next post I'll hopefully be able to write about my planned trip to ikea, the ABBA museum (yes they have an ABBA museum) and some reviews on the qualities of meatballs. 
My closing thought is this: last November Stockholm had less than 5 hours of sunlight for the whole month. So next time you look up and see the sun, please think of me. 
Adios amigos.

The 6 sided die and the 2 sided coin. Both have one thing in common besides being a terrible cliché: they just keep rolling, exactly like my day to say life here in Holland. Times are pretty simple in day to day life here. Wake up, take a bike ride to the gym. Practice at night then repeat. It's pretty cool that my life can revolve around trying to become a better volleyball player, so that along with my unlimited internet download which has allowed me to finish Sons of Anarchy makes me happy (for those wondering, Dexter will be the next to be conquered). 
Due the strong presence of Australian flavour on the roster this season, our coaches were nice enough to give us Australia Day off from practice. So that Monday we three Australians headed up to the big Amsterdam. Considering I've been living in The Netherlands for about 5 months now, I have spent hardly anytime in Amsterdam. I bring this down to a strong hatred rivalry between the biggest city in The Netherlands (Amsterdam) vs the second biggest city (Rotterdam, where if you've read my blog before you know is where I'm living). For some reason we hate them and they hate us. Their football team is Ajax whom we also hate. Our football team is Feyennoord who we love. These are the facts. But back to Australia Day; a bar in Amsterdam was having an Australia Day party. They would play Triple J's hottest 100, but more importantly they would provide me one of the few things I truly miss about Australia: the chicken Parma. Going out for dinner or lunch or any meal with me in Melbourne is simple because I always have and always will want a Parma. So coming to Europe, the Parma is a rare commodity. I was going to take a photo of the Parma but I got to excited and ate it before I had the chance. It seems novel, but when you go months without access to good coffee and other things you usedonce took for granted it's great to be able to enjoy such a small treat like this. Australia Day was another reminder of the vast amount of Aussies abroad as the place was packed full of people wearing everything from Australian flags right through to their VB hat or favourite AFL jersey. In a crazy coincidence, by pure chance I actually bumped in to a girl who I went to high school with. The odds that she, a person who lives in Melbourne was in Amsterdam at that exact place and exact time are very low, but hey it happened so anything is possible. 
On the volleyball side of things, things are coming to an end slowly. Since coming back from Christmas, we dropped our first 2 matches in disappointing fashion. But after a disastrous opening set against the best team in the league (Lycurgus), we turned a new leaf, and although we went on to lose that match 3-0 our improvement was huge. The next week we beat the Talentteam (Team Netherlands Youth/Junior) in 5 sets and played great as a team, playing together the whole match. Letting our success lead to more success the following week we lost 3-0 but played great against a good Dynamo team. Following on, against a team with similar abilities (Zaanstad)  we won 3-1. More importantly in these last few matches we've found a really good level and been able to produce it consistently, which is something that has been struggling for most of the season. Currently we are 10th out of 12 teams. It's looking like we'll finish in the bottom 4 places, and compete in the play outs (not the playoffs, which is for the top 7 teams). If we win our first best of 3 match series in the playouts then we avoid having to play for relegation, and just play for minor placings. But that's a while away. There's still 3 more matches in the regular season which concludes in 4 weeks. Then about 3-4 weeks after that of play out action than my first season will be complete. It still feels like it's all happened so fast, but I guess that means I've been having a good time. 
Oh and a TV crew came to our apartment and shot a cool piece on us Australians. Check it out below, if it gains enough popularity who knows, it could turn into a great reality show. 

After my last post, I was straight onto my Christmas break. Reading over how excited I was before the break is definitely in line with how fun my Christmas week actually was. The morning after our last match I flew to Switzerland and the Basel-Mulhouse- Freiburg airport. Yes it has 3 names. What's cool is that the airport is technically situated in France, but is so close to the Germany-Swiss-French borders that depending which way you exit the airport, a few kilometres in either direction will get you to a different country, so it was cool seeing exit signs not pointing to suburbs but rather directing you to the country you would like to go to. A few trains later, I arrived in Aarau where Jordan Richards is based. It is in the North-West of Switzerland and from there his partner in crime (Georgina) took the train with me to Geneva which is in the South-West. It was in Geneva that I would get to see Jordan's team play. It was great to see the Swiss League and be able to compare it to Dutch league. From what I saw it seems to be a bit stronger in level, and the match was really entertaining not only because I got to watch Jordan play, but there were about 5 different yellow cards handed out, a guy beating a drum non-stop for a 2 hour, 5 set match and a lot of fierceness between the two teams. Despite losing the first 2 sets, Jordan's team rallied back to take the match 15-13 in the 5th, in a match that all but secured the teams place to make the post-season still with 6 weeks to go in their season. After the match I got to meet his team mates and coaching staff, and they were all as Jordan had described: just a bunch of nice cool dudes (direct quote). Then a fun trip back to Aarau where the next morning we would fly off to Prague to spend Christmas with our old friend Gerrard Lipscombe. Before I get to Prague, just a quick note on how expensive the cost of living is in Switzerland. My cup of coffee cost 7 Francs which is about $8.5 AUD. My chicken burger meal from Burger King cost me 15 franks, so about $18 AUD. And this is just the norm. So for anyone visiting Switzerland be prepared to for it to cost you a fortune, although maybe it's worth it to be able to see the beautiful Swiss alps which by the way are amazing. 

After arriving in Prague there is one word I would use to describe if: beautiful. It really is a beautiful city. The buildings are so old, and there is so much history behind the city. The architectural detail behind the buildings was amazing. How these buildings were built centuries ago without simple things like cranes still baffles me. We saw some major sites, including the most popular Charles Bridge and Castle. The Castle was truly amazing, it's the largest ancient castle in the world (according to Wikipedia) and was just crazy. The whole city was packed full of tourists and their selfie sticks but it was still amazing, no matter where you walk around you can't help but be amazed with how surreal your surroundings are.

Another bonus is Prague is pretty much the opposite of Switzerland; that is everything is so cheap. They use the Koruna (possibly announced corona) as a currency, and $1 AUD is worth 18 korunas, so when we cashed our money in we felt like we were rich. Food and drinks are so cheap. You can eat out at a nice restaurant with a huge main meal for what works out to be $5-$10AUD each, which is just prices you can't get back home in Australia or in Western Europe.

We all spent Christmas with Gerrard and his family, exchanging gifts, while enjoying some traditional Czech Christmas foods. Fried carp is pretty much a must have at Christmas time there, cause you can't really buy it any other time of the year, as well as some delicious potato salad. An awesome night was had by all and it was great to be taken in by a family for Christmas. 

There is also an expression I heard about Prague that 'beer is cheaper than water'. Some quick price comparisons and it's absolutely true. You can buy beer literally everywhere. At some Christmas markets we saw some 500ml bottles of water selling for about $2.5 AUD, and 500ml of beer for about $1.5 AUD. So naturally the Czech people drink a lot of beer and it's by far the best beer I've ever had (sorry to all you Carlton Draught lovers out there). 
Overall my Christmas break was awesome, seeing some really good friends who I haven't seen much lately as volleyball has taken us to separate corners of the world. It was great to embrace another culture, and a few evenings we got to hit the night jazz scene as well which was cool. Live performing bands were everywhere and cool to go, watch and hang out in a relaxed atmosphere, and for the most part we had good weather but unfortunately no snow so my first white Christmas still eludes me. My mini vacation week was over, and I'd fly back to Rotterdam before New Years Eve to rejoin my team. 

For anyone who is ever in The Netherlands for New Years my best advice is this: watch out, Dutch people go crazy. I got back to town on the 29th Dec, and there were people letting fireworks off everywhere out here in suburbia at all times of day and night. Every 5-10 minutes you just hear a bang of someone letting off some fireworks. This country spends something in the tens of millions of dollars on illegal fireworks and it's ridiculous. Sometimes it sounds like there a flash bang grenades going off. Walking around downtown on New Year's Eve there were people letting off their own fireworks all night like I've never seen or heard before. Usually things get so bad there's usually a handful of fatalities due to firework mishaps so we were warned to be careful if we were out on the streets. But luckily everything was all fine.

Now were back into season mode again. We had practice tournament last weekend against Taurus and Talentteam, two teams we will verse again before seasons end. There was still a bit of rust in these matches coming back from Christmas break but we it's good to be able to get the rust off in practice matches and not league. 

Last night it was the first league match of 2015, and a very important game against Inter Rijwisk. As they are in a similar spot on the ladder it was a pretty important home match for us. They are the closest club to us (from The Hague which is only about 30 minutes away) so they brought a lot of supporters who made a lot of noise. And we had our biggest crowd by far of the season including some loud drums going on. It was an awesome atmosphere and a super close game. We would go down in a close 4 sets but can't be to upset because the whole team fought pretty hard the whole match. Luckily next Saturday night it will be another match and another opponent. 
And also, as anyone whose read some of my previous posts I've had a few visitors since I've been here. Recently Phil Freere and Mitch Branson spent two nights with us. While Mitch stuck to coaching, Phil got to step in and train with us, so the Australian/GMVA takeover of Holland is still taking effect slowly but as always it's great to see familiar faces/accents and I can't complain when he brings me milo as a gift. 
Until next time, keep on keepin' on.

As I type this, I'm gearing up for Christmas break. It feels about the right time, as having a break from volleyball for a week with no coaching, or training or matches will definitely help refresh the mind and body after what has been a busy four months.
Our last few games before Christmas have been good and bad. We played SSS at home, a team who we beat back in October. This match up would essentially be a must win match. SSS has a similar record in the ladder to us, so as we progress into the latter part of the season, these 10th vs 11th matches type of matches will be really important as to who can gain an edge to qualify for playoffs. We managed to pull off our first home victory which was huge. We haven't won at home all season, so to finally get that mini-monkey off our back was huge. There's a lot of work that goes into home matches; not just us playing but the volunteers setting up the court, ball kids, towel wipers not to mention all of the supporters that come out to support us and cheer us on. It was great to be able to string together a strong performance in front of them and get a result at home.
The last match was against Landstede in Zwolle. A nice 2 hour drive, we got to see the nicest volleyball stadium I've ever seen. They had stage lighting on the roof, which blacked out of urging the Zwolle player introductions and had some sweet stage spotlights going. Unfortunately we got crushed in under an hour, but oh well.
As I'm writing this, were on the bus back from our last match of the season which was a 'Beker' cup match, which is separate to the league. It is a national cup, that everyone in Holland regardless of division is eligible to enter. It's a single elimination style, where the highest division teams will enter the tournament bracket later on. We entered the tournament in the round of 16. We had a great opportunity, playing against a team from Hengelo who play in the Top Division (which is the division below us). If we had have won that, we would play in the round of 8 against another Top Division team, with a good chance of making the National Final Four which would have been cool. However none of that was to be. We lost 3-0 on their floor, and unfortunately struggled to really get into a rhythm and never really got going. It felt like we lost a chance to progress to the next round, but as tomorrow we're on break it's time to soon forget that match. 
So now I've seen and played against every team in the league, I've got a really good idea of the landscape who is favoured. It seems there's 2 teams a class above everyone else (Lycargcus and Landstede), another 1-2 decent teams (Orion and Dynamo), then 8 teams who can all pretty much beat each other on any given night, and even push those top 4 teams on a good night. So anything is possible on any night which means you have to be on your game always. The biggest difference I'm noticing transitioning from AVL and state league, is that anything short of my and my teams best probably isn't good enough to win as silly as it sounds, it is a reality. Every night the performance on court that we give has to be pretty darn good or else we will struggle as we've shown. As I've been the only setter with our team full time, I have started in every match, often times without a second setter present. This is also an added pressure of knowing that most of the time I'm the only setter, so if I'm playing badly there is no one to sub. But this is great cause I know it means I will be able to work myself out of tough situations, something that is really important in building experience as a setter I believe. This is a huge part of building yourself as a player and it's a cool situation to find yourself in for your rookie season in Europe.
The next part of the season will be important as we strive for the post-season, but I think a really important thing is that we keep trying to improve as players and a team. I've been immersed in a lot of new ideas and concepts from my coaches and team mates and early on what I needed to improve on most was pretty obvious. And I think I've made steps forward in the last few months, so as long as we keep trying to strive to be a better team I think good things will happen. 
Learning about the Dutch culture has also been fun too. As an outsider you can take at look at their traditions with fresh eyes. They have a tradition called 'Sinterklaas' (that's spelled correctly, not Santa). Basically Sinterklaas comes on December 5th, and leaves presents in kids shoes if they've been good or sends them to Spain if they've been bad. Unfortunately my room mate Max got sent to Spain, but me and my other room mate got a nice visit from Sinterklaaswith some nice chocolates. Here's where it gets interesting: Sinterklaas has some 'elf' type workers called 'Black Pete'. Take a look at the photo and form your own opinion but it is really controversial. The locals say it's not offensive because the black comes from the chimney smoke when delivering presents. However this issue has been taking to the UN before because many considered it to be racist. But the Dutch say it's just tradition. Intriguing to say the least.
I'm really excited for my week off though. I'm headed to see Jordan Richards Swiss team play Sunday night. I haven't seen Jordan play in real life in over 18 months so I'm really looking forward to seeing my wall/beach partner go at it. Then we're off to Prague to see my good friend Gerrard 'Lily', who I haven't seen in over 18 months so it will be great to catch up with him! Then maybe a few days in Austria or Germany (it still feels weird to be able to just say you'll take a train a few hours and be in a completely different country). Then back to Holland for New Years, some mid-season (I think that's the term) exhibition matches and straight back to league play on Jan 10th, in what will be a 10 week sprint to the end of the regular season.
But for now that's an eternity away. I will enjoy my time off, have a merry Christmas and a happy New Years. And I'm hoping that you nothing short of exactly the same.
Stay safe ya'll. 
Love love.

I'm well in truly settled in here now.  I know my way around for the most part and it's feeling more and more like home. The cool thing about living somewhere different, is exactly that: it's different. You get to know some cool things about the country and about the people, and it's interesting to compare how things are done here compared to back home in Australia. So I thought today I'd write some interesting differences that I'm slowly learning. 
One huge difference is the love of football (or as we might call it 'soccer'). This country is football mad. They absolutely love it. When you go past a park you will almost always find steal soccer goals more often than basketball rings. So after school when back home kids are playing AFL and cricket after school, kids here are playing soccer in the streets. Two weeks ago our team got invited by our sponsor to watch Sparta Rotterdam play a home match. It was pretty darn cool. They play in the 2nd highest division in Holland and there but I was impressed by how big the match was. There were heaps of people supporting, and going crazy. The following we got invited to see Excelsior who compete in the highest division in Holland. Both games were fun and also interesting to see some crazy soccer supporters. I'm not sure how, but these fans for the whole entire match are jumping up and down, chanting, yelling and beating their drums lately despite the fact that it's freezing cold. From before first kick to full time they don't stop ever. Even when Excelsior was down 5-0 with 10 minutes left all their home fans were still going crazy. Safe to say their a passionate bunch. 
It's also really obvious to notice the language difference. Although it's a different need for people to learn English, kids learn in school. Which means I can meet a 12 year old and have a conversation in English with them. And I honestly don't remember even being able to speak more than 3 words in Italian when I was that young so its cool to see bi-lingual children so young. 
Speaking of schools, they have an interesting system here. Kids will go through special tests to measure 'academic' and concentration abilities etc. They will the get placed into a class with other children of similar abilities with them. Anyone whose spent more than 10 minutes in a classroom knows it sucks children who are academically accelerated being with children who struggle more with staying focused. So by grouping similar students you can cater to the needs of everyone more easily which is a nice idea. 
Europeans definitely look in the mirror before they leave the house. Hardly ever do you see someone just walking around in their trackies and runners. Apparently even if you're going just to the supermarket then you need to make sure you look presentable. Often I feel under dressed compares to the dutchies but I'm slowly catching up. It also seems an unwritten rule that men must lather their hair in hair gel as well but I don't think I will take it to far. 
Darkness. The sun rises after 8am and sets around 16:30 PM. So it's pitch black at like 17:00 PM. That sucks. 
Coldness. It's starting to hover around the 0 degree mark tinkering into the negatives. That sucks.
Socks. In the Dutch league, you can wear whatever colour and length sock you want, and it can be completely different to your team mates socks. From my experience in Australia, you'd think that the league would fall apart but everything still functions. Maybe back home we can learn something from this free flowing sock uniform model they use here. 
Just a few peculiar things I thought worth noting.
Now onto volleyball. Our team is on the improve. At my last post our teams win loss record was 1-5. We took a hard 3-0 loss to the Talentteam (the equivalent of the AIS team in AVL) full of 17 year olds. So our record went to 1-6 but even thought we had done a lot of losing, our team and coaching staff have had really good morale. There hasn't been any panicking, and our purpose at practice to try and get better has really been coming along the last month or so.
We played against Dynamo, a team who made the grand final last season. Despite losing the first 2 sets, we brought it back to 5th, where a slight rotational error cost us. At one stage we were up 7-5 in the 5th set and feeling good, then we got called for out of rotation and the score changed to 0-6, a tough pill to swallow, but glad to say my experience as a coach of the U/19 Vic Blue boys this year definitely helped me with. We lost the 5th set eventually, but the Mayor of Rotterdam came to watch and I got to meet him which was cool. Turns out Rotterdam is sister cities with Melbourne, a fact I definitely didn't know.
The following week a match against Zaanstaad. And a gym whose roof was the lowest I'd ever lay witness to. In no exaggeration, you couldn't really set a proper high ball because you might hit the roof. The ball would have hit the roof at least 5 times a set, it was ridiculous. But we went on to get our first win in 5 sets in over a month so was pretty happy with that.
Next up was Orion. It's a small world out there, because the setter from Orion is Keith (an American). Where did Keith play his college volleyball? At Grand Canyon Uni, and he played his last 2 seasons with GMVA athlete Gerrard 'Lily' Lipscombe. So before and after (they beat us) we shared a good joke at Gerrards expense, a good pastime I enjoy wherever I am in the world. 
A long distance road match was against Rivo Rivsomething. Of course long distance to the Dutch is a 2 hour bus ride, hardly anything for someone from Australia. For this match we only had 7 players available, so our coach and assistant coaches had to uniform up and be ready just in case of injury. We went down 0-2 and some were worried we might have to bring them on, something I'm not sure their knees could have handled but we managed to come back and win the match in 5 which is a cool thing to do in front of someone else's crowd especially when said crowd is beating a drum for 2 hours during the match.
So right now were 3-8 having played everyone in the competition once. But beyond results we are getting better all the time. We have 2 more leagues matches and a cup match before the Christmas break. So as this year winds down we are getting geared up for a big push in the second half of the season. 
Special shout out of ex-pat Aussie Dave Jones who made his debut at practice for us. Our policy at the club remains: if you are an Aussie, than you're more than welcomed. 
Hopefully in my next post I will be able to delve into what volleyball in Holland is like compared to Australia. 
In the meantime, for anyone whose following my story along if there are any ever questions people have about my journey, or about volleyball in Europe I'm always happy to answer them. 
Until next time peace out holmes.

The show begins

After a pre-season filled with plenty of practice matches, we commenced the actual regular season back on Oct 4th on our home court. Opening night of a season (of any sport) to me is great. It's an exciting buzz to the air. Optimism like none that will be felt again during the season. Everyone has the same theoretical chance of winning the championship. Everyone is on zero wins and zero losses, favourites mean nothing, it's the most level the playing field will be. It was also exciting for us to get our first match underway. Having 3 imports on the same team has people very curious about how our team will go, and since we are an entirely new team everyone is eager to see how we go. Unfortunately our start to the season hasn't been as successful as we would have liked. Before the start of the season we have set a team goal. If we can finish in the top 6 (out of 12 teams) and make the playoffs then we will consider it to be a successful season.

We opened things up against Prins VCV who were a playoff team last season. We lost the opening set 25-16 due to some nerves, then bounced back to win the following set 25-23. After 1 set all the match remained very even, and they managed to take out the 3rd and 4th set 25-23. On the back of our very sweaty captain Sam Boehm who finished the night off with something like 26 points, it was close and you could tell that them being a more experienced team whose played together for longer definitely helped them in the closing stages of the match.

A few days later it was a mid week Wednesday match against SSS in Barneveld. It's only about an hour away by bus. This was definitely a winnable match for us. We versed SSS in the pre-season and won, but more so probably played our best. But it was going to be a tough task to do in their home stadium. There was probably only around 100 people who came to watch, but it was an awesome atmosphere. Every time we won a point you could hear a pin drop in the stadium versus when they won a point they went nuts. So it's fun to silence the crowd. It was a fun game that was very back and fourth. It eventually went to 5 sets, and at around 7-7 we managed to pull away thanks to some strong serving (and grunting) from our passer loper Jeffrey. Also a shout out to Max, who got his Michael Jordan / Mick Stevens flu game out of the way early in the season and despite not training during the week managed to be very productive considering he was fairly sick and looked a bit like a ghost.

A few more days passed and perhaps one of the bigger tests would come in the form of Landstede. They were champions of Holland last year. Despite losing some key players from their title team such as my beach partner and GMVA superstar Jordan Richards who decided to take his talents to the beaches of Switzerland, they were still a very solid team. It was pretty obvious to see that they train roughly 20-25 hours a week as a team, and we train about 7-10 hours a week. We lost 3-0, but it was great to see the level of the favourites to take out the title.

Time continues to move forward and our next step was an opponent Rijsomething. They lost their first 3 matches of the season so we felt like we had a good shot to beat them away from our home gym. I'd rather forget this match but we lost 3-0 and we can leave it at that.

The games flow again and the next opponent was Taurus. Anyone who plays sports knows it's cool when your friends or family come to watch you play. This match was special because the bearded one (or Liam Sketcher as some might know him as) came along to watch and cheer. It's always good to hear Aussie slang coming from the crowd even if 99% of the people in the gym have no idea what's being said. The match against Taurus was a big step forward. After we lost to Rijsomething we had a big team meeting about what we could do to stay on track, so how we responded to a bad loss a few days earlier would show some of our mental strength. We had our chances in this match. Unfortunately we were a bit short staffed. One of our middles was in Paris for the weekend with his girlfriend. I thought it was to elope but just for a holiday I'm told. That left us with 8 players for the match, so thankfully we had a spare of shoes for Sketch if something went wrong. In about all 3 sets we got to about 20-20, but then struggled to finish sets off. We would go down 3-0, but we definitely improved our play and despite the loss the performance was a good bounce back.

So having dropped to 1-4, now we would only play matches once a week on Saturday nights giving us a full week of training and no mid week matches. After the Taurus loss, on Monday night before practice our assistant coach Vic decided to take a direction with practice. Setting an individual technical goal of one aspect of each players game. If we can all improve in one small area then all of a sudden that huge improvement to the team. This really helped have a focus at training all week.

Then we had another home match on Saturday night. Against Lycargus (try and say it out loud). They have a pretty good team. A Canadian and an American pass-hitter who were very consistent. An opposite who had tattoos so pretty much all the makings of a good team. I was really impressed by them, and they are easily the best team I've seen so far. We were competitive at times but unfortunately went down 3-0 bringing our team record to 1-5 early on.

However despite all the losing it really isn't panic station times. With 22 matches in the season, we still have a long way to go. We've played some pretty good teams, so when we start to play teams who aren't favourites to win the league I think we will have much more success. Of course the competitor in me wishes that in one match we can just turn our record around but this won't happen overnight. For now we just take it one practice and one match at a time and try to put ourselves in the best position to continue to raise our level of play which will eventually lead to success on the scoreboard. We managed to play better in October than we did in September. So if we can play better in November than we did in October, heading into the Christmas break I think our record will be better.

Besides our win-loss record, I've been blessed to have a few Aussie friends visit me over the last few weeks. We had Frank (aka Nathan Roberts) stay with us for a week while he was still waiting to hear word if he would secure a contract in Europe for this season. Old man Liam Sketcher has visited as well. It happened they were here at the same time, so Rotterdam seems to be getting more Australian by the day. Our coach Victor (an Aussie) works with the national junior beach volleyball program. And who is the strength and conditioning coach of that program? Well you guessed it another Australian. Ex-Heidelberg and Victorian player David Jones. So we managed to have lunch all together. Who would have thought, 7 Australians having lunch altogether in The Netherlands. I guess our secret mission to take over is slowly working.

Then of course a brief over night visit from the captain of Yarra's back-back premiership team Steve Wallace a few weeks later. It's always good to hear some accents of people who speak normally and catch up on what's happening back in the Southern Hemisphere.

I'm mostly settled into a routine here now. I'm getting used to the weird intricacies of the Dutch way of life. Such as the terrible (and I mean terrible) liquid that passes as coffee here. We had to make a smart investment and buy a coffee machine. But there's also lots of different looks I receive when I pull out my point of relief at trainings. No one knows what it is or what it does, so they just stare at it, not really sure if it's a holy device or some kind of Australian version of a tennis ball. My English explanations haven't really worked so hopefully when I start speaking fluent Dutch it will all make sense.

Until next time, peace be with you.

We've played a lot of games since my last post. Which is great because in pre-season you want to get as much match play in as you can. Our first weekend tournament wasn't the best result. Unfortunately we lost all 3 matches we played, but considering we hadn't really practiced much together it wasn't that bad. 2 of the teams we played against will be our enemies come time for the Dutch season to start, so it was good to see what we will be up against during the league play. During the next week we played a match against a team who finished in the top 6 last season (Taurus). This match was a huge improvement for our team. I think this was the first time we had our whole team together and it's pretty cool to see the improvements in such a short amount of time. We went on to lose that match in 5 sets, but it was the best we've played for my whole time here, and wins and losses in September aren't to important. The following weekend we played another tournament in Dodrecht (I think that's how it's spelled). This was against 2 teams from the second division. These were 2 of the more competitive second division teams. And so far I've been really impressed at the quality of the second division teams. Usually back home in Australia there can be a huge drop off in levels between first and second divisions, but these second division teams can play. You'll usually find a few players who could be good enough to play in the first division, however they don't want a full time training load because they also want to live and have things like a family. The next week we had a few more practices then we headed off to a tournament in Belgium for the day. When someone usually says to me that I'm going to another country to play a tournament, I'd assume that being from Australia I'm in for a long trek. But it's only a 2 hour drive, so we drove to Belgium and back in the same day. I'm trying to explain to my team mates that 2 hours of driving from Melbourne and you'll hopefully be in bendigo, still a long way away from even reaching another states border. Unfortunately we didn't get to do any sightseeing but it was still good to see a little bit of Belgium on the road. We didn't win the tournament but it was definitely a learning experience and it gave us a huge direction of what to work on in practices. Another practice match during the week against another league team SSV. This match was played at the Top Sports stadium, which in one word was 'sick'. During the year we play half our home matches at this venue and I'm super pumped cause it's a very nice stadium. Check out the photo below.

Besides all the volleyball, I'm still continuing to settle down. The club gave us bicycles to get around, because despite that fact that I haven't seen one person wearing a helmet while riding a bicycle, everyone rides bicycles. It's only about a 10 minute bike ride to our practice facility, so since it's still nice and warm we're enjoying as much vitamin D as we can until the sun goes away and it starts raining for weeks on end. I also went to a cycling school which helps. Besides our night practices we have also had some team events. The sponsor of the team Arbo Rotterdam had a cool function at his headquarters. His office is pretty cool. It's an exact replica of Winston Churchill's office. Their is also a bar at the office too. Not sure how you get work down with a bar but it's pretty cool. It was also a great chance to wear the team suits we have. Before I got to Holland I didn't know that team suits could be a thing but they're probably one of the coolest things going around.

Despite all that pre-season action of winning and losing, playing good and bad it's all really irrelevant. Our season opener is Oct 4th, so that's when the real journey begins. If I can find a stream I'll pass it on. It's all getting pretty excited leading into that first game. Everyone is fairly unsure of what the ceiling of this team is. Which is great because being a new team their is no ceiling. With so much room to grow, we can continue to improve during the season.

Peace out hombres.