I heard Eyre,Reid,Brand,and Cox are playing keepings off by kicking sky balls.
Cocky bastards.
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I am going to keep the LID ON this preseason.
I hope we can be competitive in 2021 and win a few games.
Starting from a low expectation base here in Dubbo.
Lets see how this approach goes.
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I thought he was Daniher for a sec. A lot better looking tho.
Very similar body shape to Daniher. He’s probably more developed than what Daniher was when we drafted him.
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That is an old photo of Josh I believe. That’s from 2019 pre season.
There has been a lot more match sim play and match sim drills over the past few years pre-Xmas. Here are the first 2 old training reports that I came across.
Dec 2019
Dec 2019
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I hope we got the rub of the green with the umps for a change
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Who?
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Training from the road side of the fence, a little annoying given how far away we were from the players. Warm, windy morning for training. Good to see @nackers @CJohns and @SofStar99
I arrived at 9:15, informed that training started at 9. Pretty much all of the 1-4 year players seemed there. Smith joined the modified group of Johnson and Hird. As @CJohns said, Zerrett was out there and looked sharp.
All of the draftees made appearances, but didn’t do much. Young Eyre is a really good size.
Some modified match sim, skills were pretty good given the wind. Players at large looked pretty sharp, bar a few errors.
First look at Caldwell, pretty impressive. One occasion where he was about to be tackled, he spun, rode the tackle and got the handball. Really clever.
Players finished with some 400s (for fun, I guess). Francis was well behind the pack, but great to see McGrath, Merrett and Langford run with him to get him through. To his credit, Francis didn’t stop running.
Largely, the boys look in reasonable nick. A little worried about aerobic fitness of some, but they look sharper than last year.
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Was Merrett ‘liking’ his team-mates?
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He was not following them in the 400s.
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EFA - 2.0
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Yep coaching principle since the early 1980’s. Running laps makes you good/better at running laps
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One would think this year would be Francis’s last chance to impress and continue his career at Essendon. Hopefully he keeps improving…but the fact he is already clearly struggling is a concern.
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Just glad to hear that Reid is going to be big when he gets big.
I will let @nackers who was there do the proper right up. It was a lengthy session today (9am to 11:30). Was a lot of players coming in and out for certain drills. Felt like some work was done in the Hangar or increased gym work inside… but there was always a decent group on the ground. Today was centred more on midfield work for me
The new boys were there just to say hi and do some kick to kick and minor marking drills. Perkins only did some light jogging only. More a say hi to everyone and check out the place i would say. Josh Eyre, Cox and Brand were doing 30-40m passes to each other and they are all good by foot. Eyre was like a left footed Ridley… has a picture perfect kicking technique
Good to see Merrett out there and was quite supportive of the younger boys. He was very sharp and looked in great nick actually.
Caldwell’s skills were pleasing. I thought that he was the sharpest i had seen him…especially in the full ground ball movement drills. Drills consisted of 30 metre quick kicks from one end to the other. Jones was the key target that was pleasing to the eye… kicked a long ripping goal just quietly.
Lot of repetitive long running drills at the end. Was a tough slog.
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Unfortunately you need to have driven players that start pre-season in great shape, otherwise you need to get them running laps to get them fit. Match practice and drills are great, but nothing breaks a player more than doing laps. Its as much mental as it is physical.
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Eyre bandwagon is filling up quickly
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Francis is never going to be a 400m reps type of athlete, and that’s ok.
What I’d be interested in the track watchers thoughts on is how is he doing these? Is he getting off the starting line strongly and then fading after 200? And then getting to the start and starting off strongly again? Or is he struggling for the first 50m and then hanging on the whole way.
What he needs to be able to do is to produce repeat efforts…80m, rest, go, again and again. And my measure for his ability to do that is whether with the recovery between 400ms his heart rate is coming down quickly and he’s getting to a recovered state quickly. If after (say) 30 seconds or a minute of recovery (depending on whether he’s at max effort on these repa or at 75% or whatever) his breathing is all over the shop and he is all hands on knees and unable to go again, then he has a lot of work to do.
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Thank you @MattPocock18 and @CJohns. Love all news/observations.
Great to hear the guys are getting around Francis.
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