Cambodia Tour with the Joey’s – Recap
After settling back into work back in Melbourne, I thought I would take the opportunity to put together a quick blog post on my recent trip over to Cambodia for the AFF U/16 Football Tournament with the Joey’s.
Overall I had a great time on the trip. Although it didn’t all go to plan, it was great to get some behind the scenes exposure into another high-performance program. I always find it interesting to see the different training approaches, methods for monitoring training loads, treatment protocols and group dynamics within the sports medicine team and team in general when working with different high-performance programs.
My role for the trip was to include treatment (with the majority of this being recovery-focused sports massage the day following games), setting up the hydration for training, post-training and recovery needs & helping set up ice baths for the boys.
The first couple of days of the trip was reasonably busy, with the whole team meeting in Sydney on Friday before flying out on Saturday to Ho Chi Minh before getting our connecting flight through to Pnom Penh, Cambodia.
Our first day of training was an eye-opener for everyone with a very interesting first training pitch (our first pitch at the navy base had 4-5 cows at the back of the pitch and had potholes and gravel in patches and was nowhere near the usual standards).
The first couple of days were essentially morning weigh-ins and hydration testing, team breakfast, depart for training on the bus, active recovery session at the Olympic pool before heading back to the hotel for lunch. Then treatment’s throughout the afternoon before having tea and then setting up for the next day.
Unfortunately, I went down with some sickness after picking up a nasty infection, most likely from the food, which resulted in the next three days in Pnom Penh hospital. So after three days with some very average memory apart from being spoilt on the hospital food of bacon and eggs, it was back to the rice and chicken at the hotel x 3 meals per day.
As a result of the hospital admission, it meant that I had missed the first couple of our games. However, once getting the all-clear from our Doc it was good to get back amongst the team and pick up where I had left off before the stint in hospital.
The team was expected to do quite well on this tour. Unfortunately, in the semi’s, we went down to Thailand 3 – 2 after a late attempt to get back from 3 – 0 to get put in the 3rd/4th playoff against Laos. However, the team bounced back strong in the 3rd/4th playoff with a final score of 10 – 2 to pick up the Bronze medal.
The final morning before leaving, the boys got some free time at the shop’s to have a look around with their families and pick up some more authentic rolex watches before getting on the bus for departure to the airport and making the journey home via Ho Chi Minh again back into Sydney.
All in all, it was still a great learning experience for me. If I take out the brief hospital stint, I will now go away and have some time to work out better tactics for the sports medicine team evening up and down the river card game championships, so I don’t disgrace myself as much next time!
Toby