First time I’ve had a good look at training. Nice to see a few familiar faces.
Nice weather, which makes a change. A good portion of the 1st to 5 year players were there today. Senior players included Shiel, Smith, Stringer, McGrath, Parish (mod), Francis, Cutler,
Modified group"
Jones - doing some light running on grass, good sign
Eyre - largely doing stationary ball work and laps
Kelly - did laps, but looks fit.
Parish - not seen running, might have had an op, or just being managed
Not sighted (1-5): Draper, Ridley, Reid
Largely a fitness day today. Started with some running and light skills. Change of direction drills and some sprints.
One footy specific drill while I was there. Half ground ball movement/decision making/defending drill. It actually looked pretty good, much better decisions with the ball. We do seem to be taking the ball into the pocket and then centring the ball to a free player in front of goal, we did that quite a bit last year.
Some individuals (y’all gonna like this):
Baldwin: yeah. Yeah.
Couple of really nice pack marks. One where he came from about 30m away - barged through a couple and clunked it first go. He also appears to be a nice set shot for goal. He’s got a solid frame, and most importantly, knows how to use it. So keen to have a look at him in a game sense.
Durham and Hird (Durham particularly) look to have put on some size, which is good. Francis looks quite good, mostly training as a forward. I think most of our taller players look bigger in the arms/upper body.
Not anyone I’m concerned about yet, they all look in pretty good nick. Hope to see Walla and Draper back soon.
It will be interesting to hear what the focus of this pre season will be.
Last year it seemed very much a focus on ball movement, and working our way through the oppositions zone. From memory we didn’t do too much team defensive work.
I’m hoping this year, we put most of our effort into building a very very strong zone defence. Making it incredibly hard for the opposition to score. IMO that is what has skyrocketed Melbourne into becoming a Premiership side. Their zone defence was unbelievable…… and it showed with May and Lever mopping up the long bomb forward.
