After twenty days on the road, it felt good to be back home. From our initial mission to get to West Palm Beach in the first place, through the 18 games of rugby we played, to the eventual long haul flight home, there was not a lot of down time; we arrived home this morning exhausted.

From the onset, it was a full on trip. This time round we decided to beeline it directly to our destination. For major trips in the past, we have tended to segment our journey when there are multiple flights involved, such as with this trip.

For example, for the North America Cup in 2006, we booked hotel rooms at the Holiday Inn at the Los Angeles airport (where by chance we ran into the Silver Ferns following the same way of thinking). We extended our stay there before going any further to allow our bodies to recover from the exhaustion that comes with International travel.

This time however, following the 12 hour long haul from Auckland to Los Angeles, we planned just enough of a stop over to transfer our luggage and get on the four hour flight to Atlanta. From there, it was a relatively simple one-hour flight down to West Palm Beach. We arrived exhausted, but comforted with the knowledge that we were at our destination, and now we could focus on recovering from the trip. This was done with the usual routine of spending time out side in the sun exercising, trying to reset our body clocks to local time.

After a few days, once we were back to feeling relatively normal, we became entrenched in our reason for being in West Palm Beach: game time against three of the international teams we will meet at the Beijing Paralympics in September. We played against Paralympic qualifiers Great Britain, Canada and Germany; as well as facing off against the Swedish international side, and a ‘United Nations’ team made up of American, Canadian and Japanese players: a total of eleven games all up.

We had many objectives for this tour, but a main focus was on developing certain players and line-ups. Our results of these objectives varied. The most subjective result: a 9-2 win loss record was fine, but beyond that we felt things weren’t quite clicking the way they should be. In a nutshell, we felt a little rusty and not quite in sync with each other.

Beyond that large generalisation there was a lot more analytical discussion regarding our results and our objectives. There will also be further analysis now we are back, as we sift through the data we collected via video analysis.

From West Palm Beach, after a couple more flights, we landed in Alabama for the Demolition Derby. Seven international teams and five USA state teams had gathered at the Lakeshore Olympic and Paralympic facility: a total of 12 top-level teams ready to compete. After five games played over the first two days we were the only international team through to the top four. The other semi finalists included State teams Texas, Portland, and hometown favourites, Lakeshore.

These three State teams consist of more or less international line-ups, with the added bonus of being game hardened after practicing and playing together week in and week out. They were all also well versed in the American 40 second score clock that is in effect for the second season running. Still, we were confident we could step up and take the tournament. We took on Lakeshore in the morning, and had them on the back foot from the beginning. However, it was not o be our day. They wore us down and snatched victory from us in the dying moments.

Obviously we were gutted, but we didn’t have long to dwell on it. Long enough to get some food in, a little recovery, then we were back on for the third vs fourth play off game against Portland. The call went out to finish our tour on a high, and we did, putting them away comfortably. More importantly though I was really pleased with the way we flowed throughout those two last games. We were letting go of passes at every opportunity and making them stick: just the way we like to play.

Away from rugby of course there were plenty of other highlights throughout the trip that come when a group of kiwis spreads their wings and take off on tour, but as they say, what goes on tour…….