“We are going to Abu Dhabi”

With those words, and only a month and half to prepare, the Australian Women’s team have assembled together in Abu Dhabi to compete in the International Women’s Volleyball Tournament. A great honour for the team to be invited to participate and possibly considered a logistical nightmare to organise, but the team has made it and finally on the first day on competition (today) they are all together.

The team’s preparation hasn’t been extensive. Nine of the players have been training with the AVL teams in Australia, and all compete in the first round of AVL last weekend in Melbourne. Those players and support staff departed Melbourne on an 20 hour trip to Abu Dhabi, arriving at the hotel in the early hours of tuesday morning. The three remaining players were coming in from other locations, 2 from the USA and 1 from France, where they have been playing and training with their Club or Uni teams. They arrived 20 hours after the rest of the team, and missed the first training practice. And our captain, Anna Maycock, almost didn’t make it all. Not that anyone was panicking…but orginally given the wrong departure time for her flight from Tolouse, she missed that flight, and when she turned up the next day to catch the same flight, the ticket had been cancelled. But not one to be flustered, she just booked her own ticket to Dubai, and thankfully is here.

But who said that International travel had to be all smooth sailing. One team official was feeling rather victimised in her adventures, as there always seemed to be a problem at each airport she went through. Departing from Melbourne, her carry on luggage was too heavy, but of course, no one else’s was weighed, and transitting through Singapore, the metal detectors went off, but possibly the best incident was at Dubai International Airport, when bringing up the rear of the group, was the only person selected to have their luggage x-rayed, and thus seperated from the group for what seemed like a lifetime, but really only momentarily. (Do I really look that suspicious?)