OUR TRAINING hasn't stopped in the Pilbara with a local oval, a pool and a small weights room keeping us busy when we're not promoting footy.

On Wednesday night we went down to the oval and did a session with eight 200m run-throughs. That got the better of the boys. We've also been doing some skill work and even had a hit of cricket with some of the kids playing in the nearby nets.

There were about 30 kids down there and it was good to just have a hit around, relax and see the community in a different way.

We've been treating training like normal. Obviously we're trying to keep fit so when we come back we're not behind the eight-ball.

After training on Wednesday, we had a community social night where a few of us – Andrew Embley, Mitch Brown, Jordan Jones and I – were on a panel. The questions from the locals mostly focused on last year's disappointing season, which was fair enough. They were wondering what went wrong and I think they wanted to hear our perspective on it.

I was up nice and early on Thursday and joined the guys for a walk and a stretch, had a quick bite and then Ash Hansen and I had a radio interview with the ABC.

Next up we visited the schools and met with about four classrooms each. We spoke about where we're from and just other simple things – but the kids seemed to love it.

Fun aside, the road trip to Port Hedland was possibly the worst one I've ever done. We jumped on the bus at about 11am and things were going fine for around an hour. All of a sudden the air-con stopped working. It's about 43 degrees up here, so we were feeling every single bit of it in the bus and time couldn't go by quick enough.

By the end of it we were out of fluids and pretty much sweating drip dry, so we were all ready to have a snooze for about 10 hours.

The trip has been pretty exhausting, but after Thursday night's community panel session it's pretty low-key.

The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the club.