Your regular reporter has deputised (told) me to start this thread. Today was the first training session I‘ve been to this season (expect lots of newbie reports from the Sunday session, in the lead-up to our game of Tuesday). Overcast and a bit breezy, maybe 50 viewers.
Team came out pretty much right on 10, though they‘d been warming up inside prior to that (not sure how long). This meant they went into matchplay rather quickly, rather than having the long old-school series of kick-to-kicks and skill sessions leading up to that.
On the Gumby Memorial Oval we had Myers, Melksham, and Dempsey doing a long series of the more obvious skills stuff. Kommer did some running, not much else. Browne (crutches) and Bellchambers (normal shoes, insofar as much as his fashion sense allows) were present. No Hams or Dalgleish.
This initial matchplay (no bench) was mostly forward-focused, in the sense that most forward thrusts that failed just became ball-ups. Neil ‘I‘m the coach of the coaches, nothing to do with the players‘ Craig spent plenty of time in the thick of it as quasi-umpire and play-setter, and appears to be, to paraphrase Jackie, in porcine excrement bliss.
Can‘t say I learnt much about our forward approach from this, as the regular stopping and re-setting of the field probably robs forwards of some space. Joe did a little, Carlisle bugger-all, as we failed to notice those tall buggers up forward.
Several times during the 2+ hour session the players huddled in the middle to hear extended bouts of words of wisdom.
Bomber and other club people seemed quite happy with the Gold Coast game, noting ‘we played as we trained‘ (well, for the first half, anyway).
The largest part of the session saw half-ground matchplay (22 players) while the rotating other dozen did extended “keepings off†sessions down the far end of the ground (I think, there may have been some variety). Again, this was by definition forward-focused, as while the first few kicks or handballs out of defence were contested, that‘s a long way from the full-ground defence needed to stop opposition teams getting rebound goals.
The session wrapped up with more full-ground matchplay, but with one team sitting three on the bench. This was the opportunity for the full-ground defense to out. Bomber elbowed Craig aside to run this one, stopping play at one point to lambast the fuller team when they failed to touch the ball for ‘a minute and a half‘.
Some players (Steinberg, Baguley, Zerrett, Colyer, Hardingham, Fantasia) stayed out for some mostly rather average goal-kicking practice afterwards, with Hurley and Goddard the main autograph and photo providers.
Stand-outs? Jobe did little but was as happy to stop play and yell instructions as any coach. Baguley was very good, including some sweet bodywork on full-forward Steinberg at one point (and that‘s one of Steinberg‘s strengths, at least as a defender) and by far the best goal-kicking at the end. And Fletcher is still amazing: making very hard things look very easy.