Richmond fans are famous for their loyalty and there may be no more loyal Tiger than Andrew Sloman. Despite being based in New Zealand, “Slowy” rarely misses a game, travelling all across the country to follow the yellow and black. He has also often joined the team on their pre-season training camps, including making the trip to Arizona some years back. “Slowy” is with the team on their pre-season camp on the Gold Coast this week and we once again thought it would be great to get a fans perspective on what he sees on the camp and what excites him most about the upcoming season.

Day 1

Greetings Tiger Army and great to be back with you with a daily blog from the 2020 AFLM Pre-season Camp.

We are back on the Gold Coast for a five-day block of intense physical training interspersed with “Richmond Man”, mindfulness, meditation and other sessions and activities pivotal to our purpose and the season 2020. The Richmond Man program was established and is currently only in place for our AFLM team, so no name change yet!

Day 1 was a day of meetings and travel. The party of 93 players and staff met this morning at Tullamarine for a 12.30pm flight. Given the importance of connectivity, we had a quick meeting in the Virgin Lounge to introduce and learn more about a few new faces in the group prior to boarding. Further to that, it takes a village to support the team, so pretty much a full complement of Football Operations staff have travelled, including Matt Pearce our Head Trainer and Myotherapist. Matt is also a volunteer CFA firefighter based in the Central Highlands of Victoria, and has been very busy of late. Many supporters may not know Matt, but you’d recognise him as he’s often the first to reach an injured player during play, such as Nathan Broad during the 2019 Preliminary Final. Matt is supported here by Lucy, the trainer who delivered the so called “pickle juice” to our players, as described by Brian Taylor in the 2019 Grand Final commentary. And my role is to assist them both with player hydration during training here.

On arrival at Gold Coast Airport, we collected our bags and headed to the minivan allocated to our team. I am in Team Black with my fellow members Nick Vlastuin, Andrew McQualter, David Astbury, Tom Lynch, Jack Graham, Ben Miller, Ivan Maric and Will Martyn. We will be completing a number of team challenges throughout the next five days. “Mini” McQualter drove beautifully to the hotel as always, where a buffet of sandwiches and fruit awaited in the Team Room.

We then went straight to a meeting where Emma Murray started things off by bringing our focus to the tasks at hand, and into the meeting room. Damien Hardwick then set the scene and objectives for the Camp, and themed the 2020 season generally. This presentation is always a personal highlight, particularly when you hark back to the same presentation last year where the Blood Brothers theming carried all the way through to the podium on Grand Final day. We were all then presented with a gift to support and reinforce the 2020 theme. A Richmond Man session followed with Shane McCurry, which focussed on such things as purpose and fun.

Dinner and some Ash Barty cheering then followed. Early to bed as tomorrow will be a very intense training load day!

Andrew is a proud 2020 Richmond Executive member – Click here to find out more about corporate and coterie experiences.