George, who has relocated to Canberra in recent months for work and also to continue her on-field hockey career, has spent the past two seasons coaching the ACT over 35s at the national titles and after putting her name up for selection to a national side, was rewarded with a trip to The Hague in June next year.

The acknowledgement comes on the back of her appointment as an assistant for the Australian Country women’s under 21s team to tour Fiji in December this year.

“I found out about the under 21s job fairly early on in the year and was obviously pretty excited about that. I told my sister who proceded to tell everyone she knew straight away,” George said.

“With the vets, I was actually kicking myself for a while for not putting in for a national job last year when I coached the over 35s at the nationals. We did really well that time, but this time we had a lot of players missing so we didn’t fare quite as well.

“I wasn’t sure how things would go but I put my name into the hat and with masters tours going all over the place I thought I might have a chance of picking up a spot somewhere. As it turned out, it was with the over 50s’ trip to The Hague.

“At that level things are done a bit differently. All the skills are the same but you learn new ways of implementing them and how to communicate.”

While competing in Holland, George and her team will get the chance to watch the open men’s and women’s teams from Australia competing at the main World Cup held concurrently at the same venue.

When George heads to Fiji in December with the Country team, she will have the bonus of having three Bathurst players in the team itself in the form of Kelsey Willott, Andrea Seymour, and Souths team-mate Sarah Watterson.

Though her coaching workload has actually been a lot lower in 2013 than in recent years, George’s on-field commitments have been huge, as she starred in Souths’ push to the Premier League semi-finals while also driving to Canberra each week to play in the top grade competition in the nation’s capital.

She made the decision to move to Canberra and has been there for the last two months working as a teacher and says that some of the things she has learned this year as a player will give her valuable insights when she next takes charge of a team.

“This year was the least amount of coaching I’ve done for a while, so it has been more of a year for playing,” she said.

“I worked out that I travelled something like 11,500 kilometres on my own to play which has been interesting. Some of the coaches I’ve had in Canberra have been from a very high level and it has exposed me to a lot of different concepts.

“Even the way they talk can change the way you do things. You might be giving the same message as someone else, but they put it in exactly the right words and it makes all the difference.

“As a player I feel like I was in the best form of my career. I think I’ve been blessed to coach at such a young age due to injuries and stuff – I’ve taken it on earlier and though I’m glad I’m back playing now, I’m grateful for the stuff I’ve already learned coaching-wise.”