It was a freezing, wet and windy evening when Gisborne football coach Mandy Owen showed up to training on August 2. So much so, she almost called the session off.
But with a year of extreme and unpredictable weather, her team’s training and playing opportunities have been significantly restricted, and a teammate had organised a physiotherapy talk first, so the busy Kaiti Primary School deputy principal persevered.
Unbeknown to Mandy and the rest of the Thistles’