Outside of grand final day, there is not a better weekend to play or be involved in sport at any level. The importance and the great celebration that ANZAC Day has become makes it a special time.

As an entire organisation, our men’s, women’s and Academy squads attended the Darwin Dawn Service on Thursday morning. It’s a great reminder to all of us that we are privileged to live a life that we do. It also presents an excellent opportunity to go to Brisbane and play the traditional ANZAC game against Redland.

It has not been the start we were looking or hoping for in the first two rounds, but while disappointed as a group I am really confident that we are better placed coming out the other side of those results. We have been able to study at some vision, look at some areas that need immediate improvement but also focus on some things we have done pretty well. It has been a positive fortnight in learning for us all.

The opportunity to reset and go again over the ANZAC weekend is ideal for our group. The values that our ANZACs and all of our service men and women live by every day; courage, mateship, perseverance and sacrifice are values that our players can hopefully take a lot from. While the situation and outcome can never be compared to that which they faced and active personnel continue to meet, there is still significant learnings.

We need the courage to play without fear and to continue to take the game on and believe. The mateship means to trust in the bloke next to you to play his role, and perseverance is to do it for long periods regardless of things going well or not so well and to sacrifice your own game at certain times for the betterment of the collective team.

If we can bring some of these traits into the game against Redland, we are confident in the talent we have to turn our fortunes around and have ourselves well and truly in the game when it matters.

Go Thunder!