West Coast’s first and second year players, together with John Worsfold and a number of other staff members, have travelled to Cambodia this week as part of the club’s ongoing induction process for new players.

After two days of solid construction, the boys have built 20 houses in the tiny Cambodia village of Tra Pang Saray for underprivileged families. Youngster Ryan Neates checks in at the end of the trip and explains the impact the experience has had on the group.

Click here to see some incredible photos from the last day of construction and handover ceremony.

It’s Thursday night and we’re sitting in the Malaysian airport. I’ve just taken a break from the card game to come have a chat to ya. It’s been a whirlwind couple of days; Hamsy is just ordering a drink as we speak in the background, just not putting me off at all Hamsy.

So it’s been a huge couple of days, we’re just waiting on our flight to Perth and we’ve got about three to four hours to wait here and then we’ll come back into Perth.

We started building the houses on Wednesday and then stayed at a children’s orphanage that night, which was run by some amazing people, Gary and Kim Hewett. This couple had come over from Perth, he was originally a dentist and went on a holiday over there once and just couldn’t forget what he saw, with the poverty and all of that, so he just decided he had to do something about it.

They are just some of the amazing people we met on the tip so far, just crazy, he’s rescuing orphans from being trafficked into prostitution and we’re talking about kids of about four or five years old up to a ten-year-old, it’s just awful. But the Hewetts are doing amazing things and it’s great to see how much these kids have got to live for now compared to what they were facing. It’s just terrific what they’re doing.

So after we got to the orphanage, which I think was around 7pm, we walked into an absolute swarm of mozzies and bugs and had to keep your mouth closed otherwise you’d get them in there.

Once we were all showered up, we had dinner and then the kids put on a few performances for us, which was great. We had the next ‘Jason Derulo’ sing us a Cambodian love song called ‘No Chance’, which was pretty awesome and then a few traditional dances as well.

Morro [West Coast chaplain Paul Morrison] got up on stage and even sang a couple of songs, with Koby Stevens and Luke Shuey on the drums which was pretty exciting.

Thursday morning the kids woke us up around six o’clock, just wanted to play some volleyball, as you normally do around that time in the morning. It was great fun though, all these little fellas who were like three-foot tall made us think we had a pretty good shot against them, but they ended up killing us. We struggled a bit in the volleyball, but it was just great to interact with the kids and everyone was having a big laugh about it.

So we went back to finishing up the houses that we had started on Wednesday. We were getting pretty good at it in the end, so it didn’t take us too long to knock up the final seven or so houses and then after that we had a little bit of a handover ceremony to the owners and that was pretty special, that we actually got to interact with them.

It was probably the first time that we saw what we were doing this for and how it actually impacted on the people. Seeing their faces really brought it home for us with all of their young children, some who didn’t have enough money for food or clothes. It had a massive impact on us as a playing group. Working for just two days of our lives was going to impact on them for the rest of their lives and give them a chance to have a better life.

I think all of the boys are just thankful for this opportunity and it just makes us realise just how good we’ve got it at home.

This morning we were also lucky enough to meet the Cambodian expat footy team run by Steve Morrish, an ex-cop out of Victoria and he was just another one of the amazing people that we encountered on the trip.

He’s now working in Cambodia to try and stop the sex trafficking of children. The team is actually heading over to Vietnam to play against a side they have formed within a round-robin Aussie Rules competition.

We feel they have a good chance, they’ve got a few new recruits apparently. They were telling us a new ruckman has just come on board and they have a star on-baller so hopefully they do well, especially against the Vietnamese. We’ll back ‘em in.

So that was pretty much the trip for us. We just then jumped on the bus and headed to the airport and everyone is now just talking, summarising the trip I guess and what a great experience it was.

A big thanks to everyone who supported us through the past couple of days, in particular the fans and iiNet who put forth the money and has just been so supportive, especially iiNet representative Rebecca Moonen who has been great also. Without them, all this wouldn’t have been possible and I know the boys and all the coaches are really thankful to them for the opportunity we have had to enrich not only our lives but also the Cambodians.

For Tom Swift's account of the first day, click here. Jacob Brennan takes us through the next phase of the trip here.