.

I went to The Manchester School of Physiotherapy, obviously in Manchester, England. I did my three-year Bachelor of Science honours degree. I then worked out in England for a couple of years just to get my rotations and a bit of experience before thinking about coming home.

I then went to Trinity College in Dublin and did my master's in sports medicine and then got a job with the Irish Cricket Union and, following through that, worked with the under-19 team and the senior team. I did that for a year and a half and then decided it was time to come back home.

No, not at all. I've played cricket all my life but it was just a bit of luck really that the full-time Irish cricket physiotherapist needed help. She came into the room with myself and a bunch of Irish people who didn't even know what it was and asked if anyone was into cricket. (I replied): 'Yeah, I'm into cricket' and it just sort of took off from there. It worked out, just from being in the right place at the right time. It worked out well. I was in Bangladesh with the Irish under-19 team and Neil Speight, who's the CEO of the Bermuda Cricket Board, was e-mailing me and asking when I was coming back because the regular team were looking for a training programme to get ready for the ICC tournament in Ireland, of all places, to qualify ? as they did ? for the World Cup.

So it was a good transition. As soon as I came back I was into that, in addition to the work I did at (King Edward VII Memorial Hospital).

There's a wide range. Physiotherapy is basically the treatment of ? they call it neuro-musculoskeletal. That covers your tendons, your bones, your ligaments, and also the nervous system. We tend to work in outpatient settings. We tend to work in Intensive Care doing the respiratory ? helping with breathing, clearing secretions, rehabilitation after strokes, fractures and orthopaedics.

So it's quite a wide and varied area. There's also elderly rehab, doing balance work. So it's quite varied, physiotherapy.

I think for me, I knew I wanted to do something medically oriented. I did a biology degree before at (Canada's) McGill University and then obviously through my sports and seeing other physiotherapists, it just seemed a natural fit for me. I could sort of mesh the sports and also the therapeutic world as well.

I would guess you're looking at maybe ten. I might be overstepping, there may be even less than that. I think when I started there were 40 registered physiotherapists on the island. The majority work at the hospital. Again, off the top of my head, you're looking at a staff of maybe 12 to 14 and then you have a few that work in private practice ? I would guess maybe another 12 or so.

And then the rest probably aren't practising right now or are maybe doing part-time work. Again, that was the information I had from about a year ago. I'm not sure what the numbers are now.

Obviously, the more affluent the society, the more disposable income you're going to have. The more active you are and, obviously, if you're not as fit as you'd like to be, the more chance you're going to get injured.

And that's where we come in. I find the large majority of the people that I see in the clinic, we call them the 'Weekend Warriors'. They probably played a pretty good, high level of sport in their day and now they're just doing the weekend thing. They're not training as hard or preparing as well as they should. It tends to lead to them getting injured. We patch them up, get them back on the field.

: All ages. The variety of people we see are usually over 35. We do get a lot of kids with childhood disorders that do need to be seen. The majority of them get seen at the hospital. They have a pretty good after school programme there.

But the majority are your Weekend Warriors. I see a lot of the footballers, the cricketers ? who tend to be younger. Again they do get injured more frequently than the others but we do get the whole variety right up to 65, 70 years old.

: I've played all my life. When I was in England I was playing with a team in Manchester, the Disley Cricket Club, who play in the Cheshire League. And in Ireland, I played with a team, they call them YMCA, and again, it's just a local club team although they travelled all over Ireland really, playing club competitions.

When I came back here ? it must have been in February of 2004, just as we were leading up to when we qualified for the World Cup ? I really wanted to establish myself as a physiotherapist and figure out how best I could help the team because I did the similar role with the Irish team and it was a nice fit.

I made a conscious effort really not to. I mean, obviously, you get so much time to bat ? the physiotherapist shouldn't be taking all the time to bat. But helping out with bowling and fielding and things like that was good because I knew all the drills and things like that. So it was natural to be the physio, be the assistant trainer, be the wicket-keeper, coach . . .

Of course. When you have a limited budget that's what you need to do. At the moment the situation has changed with the influx of Government money ($11 million over four years) and also the money from the ICC (International Cricket Council, the game's governing body) so we can afford to specialise. Dramatic. Dramatic. Dramatic. We have a coach now, Gus Logie, who has a high work ethic, who really instils a belief in the players and in their own ability. We have two ? we call them part-time personal trainers ? who help out with fitness and we have a whole fitness regime that myself and a few of the other guys came up with and they're undertaking it.

We now have a physiotherapist who's coming on to help out with the guys as well. So it's coming on. We have a nutritionist. We have a psychologist. So it's coming together.

A lot of it is looking at the mental approach to everything we do. Again, if you don't have a strong goal as to what you want to get out of an inning or out of a match, then you just tend to go with the flow.

A lot of it (involves) breathing exercises and just having a clear mind, keeping positive thoughts. And that's quite difficult especially when you're in the middle and you have eleven hostile players against you ? and you're away from home. So there's some concentration techniques and those things are quite good.

It wasn't as blatant as I think it was maybe portrayed in the media because, obviously, they speak a different language. When you play against people who speak different languages and they do speak English, they're speaking for your benefit.

So I think when they do speak English you need to take that back and have a little bit of a laugh in the back of your mind that they're saying it for your benefit. But they've got issues they're going through ? their history, in separating with South Africa.

For us, it was a learning experience. The next time the guys come up against a similar situation, hopefully, they can handle it a lot better because they've gone through it.

I scored 52 in the 20-20. Again it was good. For myself, I'm sort of breaking into the team. I have quite a strong, goal-orientated mind and that's basically how I am with everything.

The psychologist was basically asking us: 'What do you want to get out of it? What's your motivating goal?' I have different techniques that I use to try and get myself mentally ready. A lot of it is just backing your own ability.

If you don't have faith in yourself, how can you expect somebody else to have faith in you? Once you're there, you just hope you perform to the best of your ability.

It's difficult because we didn't know who we were going to go up against. It's a masters tournament, which is an over-35 tournament, but a lot of these guys have obviously played at the highest level and are still quite fit.

So we didn't know what to expect. (However) it doesn't really affect our preparation. Whether you play an over-35 team or an under-20 team or whatever, you still prepare the same way. The guys have put a lot of work in over the last year and it's definitely stepped up since last November and now we're getting to see some results.

They are our idols so it's an honour to be on the field with them and have an opportunity to talk with them and try to pick their brains to see how they approach it. But it's great playing in front of your own fans as well.

And that was something that we hadn't had the opportunity to do ? in terms of getting the field ready and things like that, issues that were obviously out of our control. But it was nice to have a nice facility and a nice atmosphere ? it's a great atmosphere down there. But it was good to get one over the West Indies.

Well, Gus Logie basically says that cricket is cricket whether it's a shortened version of the game or a longer version of the game. You still have to bat, bowl and catch. It was gimmicky initially. I think it originated in England to try to generate interest because the longer version of the game, if you're not into cricket, it's very difficult to follow.

Twenty-twenty, the whole game is finished in two-and-a-half, three hours. So you can go to work, get off early, go down, watch the game, have a couple of drinks ? you're out by seven. So it's definitely more marketable ? it's coloured clothing, white balls, you have music.

But it's good. Like I said, it's cricket. We still go about it the same way we would approach a 50-over match, just a bit more aggressively ? hitting the ball on the ground, running hard between the wickets. The thing about Bermudians, we really do have a natural ability to hit the ball, so that's not a problem. It's just applying that to a different premise of the game.

Definitely. The fast bowlers get affected most because they're the ones that are running in ? 15, 20 paces, arching their backs and bowling as fast as they can. So they're the ones who are most prone to risk. They have to be the fittest ones on the team and they have to be flexible as well.

Down the line obviously, the fitter you are in anything you do, the less injury prone you are going to be. Saying that, if someone smashes a ball 400 miles an hour at you, it's going to break your finger. So some things you really can't get away from.

But fitness, mainly for us ? we're not professionals, we're amateur athletes ? it's quite difficult. Whereas professionals can get up, get some breakfast, go to the gym, have a net session. We're basically getting up, having breakfast and going to work and then in the evening trying to get in a net session and then some fitness. It's quite difficult. But I think it's a great opportunity and I think the guys are enjoying it.

I think people don't tend to realise what is needed to improve their fitness and get physically healthy. People look at is as a long mountain ? I need to lose 40 pounds ? instead of saying, 'I'm going to walk to work three times a week, I'm going to take the stairs'.

It's the small things that actually add up. From the physiotherapy point of view specifically, I think people leave things too long before they actually get things looked at. If people take anything from this, I hope it's that prevention is always much, much better than cure.

In terms of physiotherapy, in terms of diabetes and high blood pressure, obesity as well. (Undertake) a level of activity that's comfortable with what your lifestyle mandates. I think people know when things are lingering.

The number of times I've seen people come in without saying that they've got something that's been lingering for a while. They just ignore it. They think that if they ignore it, it will go away and it doesn't go away.

Especially a lot of the older, male Bermudians, they tend to just put it off until it's really bad. I think that's probably cultural ? Bermuda has a laid-back culture ? but if you can nip things in the bud before they become a bigger problem, then the success of properly getting over them increases dramatically.