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The website team at evertonfc.com will provide regular blogs about the events here on the site and the stories from behind the scenes you may not be aware of.

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By Media and Publications Manager Darren Griffiths 

Welcome to my second blog of the Australian tour.

I met a former Everton player here in Sydney this morning...but I doubt many supporters will recall him.

Dennis Jaeger was a youth team player in the mid-60s and as he lives in Sydney these days he was delighted to come along to watch his former club training.

The squad were going through their paces at the West Tigers Rugby League stadium on Monday morning, and local man Dennis came along.

My photo of Dennis Jaeger's photo, with an arrow photoshopped on

He had a black and white youth team photograph with him from his Goodison days and he was pictured alongside the likes of Jimmy Husband, John Hurst and Geoff Barnett.

A really nice man, he also had a menu from the 1966 FA Cup final banquet that had been signed by Harry Catterick and the rest of his victorious squad.

On the pitch the 2010 players looked nice and sharp during the sessions with the emphasis on both ball work and physical fitness. 

The afternoon session at the Sydney Olympic stadium warm-up track however, was purely physical! With not a single football in sight, the players spent a gruelling hour doing track running. It was tiring just looking on!

A snap of the morning training venue

The whole Olympic village is a very impressive area that, according to our guide, was little more than wasteland before the games. The Aussies invested heavily and it was certainly money well spent. Australia to host the 2022 World Cup? You heard it here first!

In between the two training stints we had the official media launch for the three-match tour.

This took place in the magnificent ANZ Stadium and was attended by at least thirty Australian journalists from the medium of newspapers, radio and television.

David Moyes, Mikel Arteta and Tim Cahill were in attendance with, predictably, the Aussie getting the bulk of the attention.  Tim is massive here. He's on every other advert on the television! There was a break of two minutes during a programme last night and he wasn't featured so I rang reception and asked them to get a technician to have a look at the set!

At the press conference, all three of our guys sat on the top table for 20 minutes of questioning before we split them up to fulfil the individual obligations.

I would hazard a guess and suggest that conducting interviews for the Fox Sports reporter was certainly not a chore for our guys!

Also very eye-catching was the stadium itself. We were all very impressed with it and the boys can't wait to play there next Saturday.

In the evening we staged our first evertonfc.com webchat of the trip with Jermaine Beckford answering the questions from the fans.

He's a great guy and happily waded through the questions for half an hour or so - revealing his footballing hero, making comment about Fellaini's hair and hinting at a possible Caribbean international connection.

Oh, and someone asked him who he thought would win a fight between an emu and a kangaroo.

Some Evertonians are eating too many smarties!

I suppose it would depend on circumstances. I'd go for the latter but if the emu had a baseball bat and the kangaroo had just come off a night shift then it would be interesting.

See you tomorrow...