Guest blogger Justin Eveson pops into Bluesky to give us all an update on his preparations for London 2012...Justin has just arrived in Italy to fullfill a 6 month playing contract that will lead him into London

La Dolce Vita

Well it has been a little while since my last blog, but this will be the first one from our new home in Rome!

The first thing I want to talk about is our journey here with a 2 month old baby Hugo, over the years I have experienced many flights with the screaming baby up front so I know what it could have been like but we must have had some serious karma up our sleeves as the guy was an absolute little champ on the way over, sleeping for most of the flight and only really waking to have a feed or change, but I think the thing that most impressed me was he equalized the air pressure all by himself on take-off while his mum and dad watched nervously with dummy, bottle and toys at the ready!

Arriving back at Fiumicino airport brought back a lot of memories for me, it has been four years since I played in Italy and even though my Italian was a little rusty we got the basics sorted out pretty quickly: setting up house; re-learning to drive on the other side of the road; Italian SIM card; internet at home and getting reacquainted with my old friend the Diavola pizza (hot salami pizza with olives)!

We then settled into a pretty heavy training regime as the two other Australian players here (Michael and Brad) and I were preparing for the qualifying tournament for the London Paralympics as well as getting straight into the Italian League.  Playing for a new team there is always a bit of settling in period but luckily I knew most of the guys already which made the transition a bit easier and this showed on the court  as we put four games on the trot into the win column.

Paralympic Qualifiers

It felt like no sooner had we arrived in Italy I had to leave again, which was made much more difficult as I was now heading to South Korea for the next  10 days and I had not been apart from Hugo for more than a weekend before. I can tell you that while Skype is a fantastic thing there is no substitute for a hug from my boy J.

It was great to catch up with the Rollers again though as we embarked upon the next step in our journey towards defending our gold medal in London. The Asia Oceana zone allows two teams to qualify for the Paralympic Games which means four of the six teams there miss out and as expected there was some heated competition for those spots. The Rollers made it through to the tournament undefeated, but the final pool game between Japan and South Korea was an absolute nailbiter with the hometown heroes going down by one point to round out the two London qualifiers.

So with Japan, and most importantly, the Aussie Rollers booking their tickets to London we were on the first plane back to Rome and a family reunion! Look out for my next blog for an insight into Italian life and a round-up of our tough games ahead, ciao ciao!