Gridiron Australia Development Tour 2007

On Sunday, 26th August this year, 30 representative of Gridiron Australia left Sydney for Salt Lake City, Utah. 

Little did we know that, seventeen days later, most of us would be back in Sydney with a deep affection for the game of American Football and numerous plots hatching beneath the surface as to how we could return to the land that calls this sport its own.

The aim of the tour was to improve the game as it is played in Australia, by exposing players and others in the Gridiron community to the inner workings of College and High School Football.  I am sure that this aim was achieved, as we spent many hours on the football field, in gyms, visiting football facilities and watching games over there.

Team at Training, BYU Rectangular Oval

During the first week, many days were spent at the Brigham Young University (BYU) football fields.  They have rectangular ovals over there, due to a lack of cricket and Aussie Rules football!

Above is a picture of the team trying to look presentable in their Tour shirts with Coach Pella in the background on the right.  We had some afternoon shade at the fields, which was welcome due to the heat wave which hit just before we came and stayed for a while after we left.

BYU Football Department from the Training Fields

This shows the Football Department in the background, which houses Cougarland with lots of display cases for a range of sports on three levels, the locker room, gym, offices, meeting rooms, lecture theatres and video review rooms.  We went on a tour of the facilities and the gym staff, Jay Omer and his assitant Justin McLure, went out of their way to spend time talking to anyone who was interested for a really decent lenght of time.  That was really very kind of them and we appreciated it very much. 

Justin demonstrated lots of key strength moves for the group, while the basketball players at the other end of the gym did their best to be noticed in amongst the medicine balls and bench presses.  He also stayed and talked to answer questions and individual players from our group felt very comfortable firing questions at him, which he very ably answered.