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Western Australia will make its National Fistball Championship debut in Geelong this weekend - a milestone for WA Sport and Australian fistball.
West Coast Eagles premiership player Will Schofield says the Western Fisters are ‘dead serious’ in their quest to win the National Fistball Championships.
The side, captained by Schofield has been in discussion, and a running joke on his podcast for the past few months, but was only formed four weeks ago following an open invitational in Leederville.
Schofield says more people showed up than he anticipated, but all of them were committed to state representation.
“We had about 100 people down at Floreat Athena Soccer Club and probably about 90 per cent of those were dead serious about representing their state. It very quickly became obvious we needed to take it quite seriously,” he said.
“We picked a squad of 15, and over the past four weeks, we’ve trained twice a week whittling the squad down to a squad of 10 players, plus, an international coach Monika Schwitter. She is a Swiss expert.
“It’s gone from a bit of fisting innuendo to dead serious trying to win the championships this weekend.”
The Western Fisters, are starting with a clean slate, with no previous experience in the sport. Comparatively, the other four state sides have Australian representatives in them.
However, there was plenty of athletic experience within the squad including former volleyballers and AFL players. Unfortunately, former AFL players Lewis Jetta and Hamish Brayshaw had to withdraw, but Schofield says the squad runs deep.
“We’ve had two volleyball expats able to come across from that sport, and we’ve got a couple of the Backchat crew involved in it that have quickly adopted this as their premium sport,” said Schofield.
“Lewis Jetta withdrew this week due to family reasons, and Hamish Brayshaw is in a moon boot at the moment so, the reigning Sandover medallist will sit out as well.
“We’ve got a pretty deep squad and looking forward to getting over to Geelong. South Australia, Vic Country, Vic Metro and New South Wales are the four other sides, and some significant rivalries are building in the fistball community.”
Sending the team to Geelong has been a ‘fair’ financial investment, costing approximately $25,000 - including uniforms, flights, accommodation and other operational costs.
Schofield says there has been ‘great support’ from local businesses to make it happen.
“The squad, as well as the sponsorships and the partners we’ve developed over the past four months, has been a really positive part for us, being able to highlight some of these small businesses in Perth,” he said.
“We’ve had a lot of support which has been awesome. We have taken it from that invitational very seriously because we want to bring back the cup. We look forward to bringing that back to WA.”
The Western Fisters’ inaugural National Fistball Championship campaign starts at 11.30 AM AWST on Saturday and can be watched on Streamr.
IMAGE: The West Australian