So I played another game of AFL yesterday. Like in the previous matches I played predominantly in a back pocket position. It's interesting playing a game where your main purpose is to shadow someone else. You run when they run, you walk when they walk, you turn when they turn. It's all reactionary and for someone like me who is not the quickest off the mark it's an interesting challenge.

I've been finding more and more it's about positioning yourself in the right areas. After a bit of a talk last week by one of the senior players to the "defensive players" I gained a few tips to use. The guy I mainly played on yesterday was playing his first game of AFL and is a Union player just playing to fill out some numbers. He largely stood still which wasn't such a challenging role for me to stop.

Gave away a free early in the game on another player who was running around a bit more and unfortunately also gave away a 50 metre penalty which resulted in a goal. Basically I was standing the mark from my free kick against, about 52 metres from goal, and the umpire was yelling at me "a metre to the mark, a metre to the mark"... I stared uncomprehendingly at him for a few seconds until he said "You've got a metre to the mark". It was at this point I realised he was telling me I could go forward another metre.

It was also at this point that the guy started to begin his run up to kick so I, knowing I had another metre to go, took a few steps towards him and jumped up in the air to put him off. Unfortunately the umpire thought I took a bit more than a metre so marched him 50 metres until he was directly in front of goal which he, obviously, slotted right through.

Wasn't particularly happy and it was hard to look at my fellow defenders for a few minutes. They were all very supportive though and encouraging me. So that was good. Also I think the opposition missed their chance to really lay into me. A few seconds later the runner was running towards me and I thought "here we go I'm about to get dragged" but he only passed on a message for me to keep my head up and stick with my man.

Benny managed to give me a clean possession from the bottom of a scrap later in that quarter and I ran clear, out of defence for a few metres, before kicking forward and hitting a target. Felt good about that as I'd done something good to outweigh some of the bad. Also late in the game there was about 5 or 6 bounces in a row in their goal square where I got to dive on the ball and try and handball it out as I was getting tackled etc which I thoroughly enjoyed.

All in all again I didn't see much action. The quality of the opposition hasn't been good, especially yesterday where we won by 92 points, and playing defense means the ball was obviously rarely coming my way. I'm sure things will sort itself out though and I'll get more time on the field and against stronger opposition once the season starts.