World Cup training camp with Solomon Islands Kurukuru

As you probably noticed on my social media, I am currently involved in a training camp with the Solomon Islands national team. They will spend August in Poland before heading to Futsal Week in Croatia, then Lithuania. The above video is an interview with the media manager, Simon Abana ahead of their first friendly against Futsal Team Brzeg, from the Polish Ekstraklasa.

Covid opportunity

So how did this come about? While in Malaysia, I was in discussions with their head coach Vinicius Leite about a training camp in Malaysia. Vinny is a Brazilian coach in Australia. Well, as we all know, the World Cup got postponed and most plans fell apart, including my new contract with Perak.

Silver lining

However, always seeing the bright side, I find myself in Poland with an exciting project starting in September. And due to very late lockdown restrictions in Australia, where the Solomon Islands had planned to do their camp, I asked my club if we could help and host them. They already planned to visit us and play some matches in September so we gladly extended their visit here for all of August.

So here we are and head coach Vinny has asked me to help with some sessions over the coming weeks. He unfortunately can’t get to Poland until 21st August. I spoke with the coaches Nelson (physical) and Francis (assistant) and they asked me to work with the team on defending and transitions, which is my favourite area of coaching!!

World class facilities

Solomon Islands warm up at Aqua Zdrój before their friendly with Brzeg
Sports hall at Aqua Zdrój, Wałbrzych

What an absolute honour, pleasure and fantastic experience it is so far. The facilities are amazing and I am already planning on inviting some teams here and the boys are so great to be around and coach. Some of the most humble* sports people I’ve met.

Have a watch of the video of my interview and I’ll keep you updated across my social media pages. I hope I can contribute just a tiny amount to the Kurukuru’s World Cup campaign. They certainly have a new fan. Not that they need any, they are one of the fan favourites and they are hugely supported back home!

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