I was able to pop past training on my allotted time of exercise today and watched for about 20min.
Langford was training on the rehab oval doing just about everything without hesitation. Jumping, kicking, sprinting, one on one with coaches. He must have just missed out this week. Right to go next week if we win.
Walla trained with the main group for the duration I was there, seems the ‘spark’ is still missing in him. Nothing else I can really report, its a tough one to judge from the outside.
While I was there the group was doing a full match sim drill, looked like the ‘A’ team vs the rest. Caldwell was in the ‘A’ team and Clarke was with the rest who were wearing yellow bibs (which included Cox, Gleeson and Phillips). Sometimes it can reflect the team that has been selected, sometimes it doesn’t, we’ll find out 5pm today.
Overall the boys looked switched on and ready to roll.
Good to hear that Langford is getting close. He will be champing at the bit to get in and show what he can do. He will be a great weapon to add to our arsenal.
Kudos to anyone organised enough to attend training and/or coherent enough to post astute predictions about team selection. I’m a blubbering sweaty nervous wreck meself.
In past years it hasn’t felt like that at all for me. In those years we’ve limped into the finals, sometimes only being there because our rivals fell at the last hurdle, and I’ve had no expectation of winning, except perhaps that final against North where I thought we might win because they were even worse than us.
This year we’ve won our way into the finals fair and square, a game and percentage clear of ninth place. The team is playing good, hard, committed football. To me it’s completely different.
I still don’t have any expectation of winning on Sunday. Footscray are an excellent team. They’ve been playing terrible football for the past few weeks – since we beat them, in fact; but there’s every chance that on Sunday, in a final, they will bounce right back. If that happens, we can still win, but we will have to be at our very hardest and most committed.
So I don’t have any expectation. But I do have hope.