Keely Dunn officiating at the 2005 Junior World Cup in Chile. China has just scored.

In a follow up to the engaging How I Lost My Swagger, Keely Dunn, a Canadian FIH hockey umpire, describes how she "got her swagger back."

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Arriving in the UK, I had two goals for my umpiring. One: streamline my international presence; and two: develop my style.

It was easy to set out to conquer my first goal. I joined the gym 5 minutes up Yarm Road and started going daily, apart from the days I umpire and one rest day a week. Clearly, I hadn't realized the full extent of the damage my osteoarthritic knees were doing to my fitness before I had my treatments in September. I was in utter denial about the atrophy to my muscles and shrinking aerobic capacity. Whether it was just laziness or just the fact that I could barely walk an hour after any kind of workout (or getting up from my desk, or walking down the stairs first thing in the morning, or walking up the stairs at night, or not being able to bend my knees past 90ยบ) - whatever, what's important is that I'm training again and training hard.

After a month it's already night and day. I feel strong again on the pitch, at ease with the pace, calm after a big sprint. I'm addicted to the workout "high" - although I don't feel it as a high per se but as a "medium" that gets me out of the doldrums to where I want to be on a daily basis. And I don't look quite so Stay-Puft anymore, thank goodness.

As for the second goal, well... it's not turning out to be quite so easy. How do I go about developing a style, particularly one that's unique to me? That fits my personality? That, in the end, is appealling to the Big Shots? That looks good on TV? I have little idea, and clearly that's my problem.

I tried the approach I use with any scary big project - break it down into baby-steps, something(s) small and tangible. I decided I was going to try signalling "play on" differently. I had a couple of ideas, but I decided to try using one or two arms, pointed diagonally downwards with a flat palm showing. I've seen a few umpires doing it, male and female, and it looks like you can make it dramatic or laid back. One Trini umpire I'd seen would just point at the ball as it was being moved on the pitch without saying a word (he's a quiet man), as if to say "it's right there, just go ahead, the ball's right there, still in play...". I wanted to invoke that same sense of obviousness, if you will.

I have yet to use the signal in a game. For whatever reason...

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To read Keely's full account, please click here.

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