Training report - Thursday 28 January 2021

[Saga]

@Long_haul

Is it Mongke?

[Anabelle]

Yeap starting 4

Throw in Hooker and Ambrose not a bad starting back six

Although our midfielders are going to have too push back and help out quite alot to plug some holes so the two way running needs to be their from Caldwell, Merrett and Shiel in particular

[Tippa-the-Iceberg]

Nth.
Hawks.
Syd.

Only sides feel we can absolutely beat.

Not sure how many of those we play twice?

Who farken knows how the flakey Dees will go.

[Anabelle]

Adelaide haven’t improved their list that much, lost more experience aswell.

Reckon we can match the pies this year aswell

[Anabelle]

2022 maybe but not 2021

[Tippa-the-Iceberg]

Ah Fk yes Crows too!

[Slappery]

If so then I don’t read sarcasm very well. My apologies

I enjoyed Menzies.
He was rather funny and helped pass the time.

[Kj_11]

Good news then, we play all three sides twice, including two in the first month.

So that’s momentum & six wins atleast for the season, a nice little platform for a finals push

[Fozdog]

Menzies was hilarious. I’m looking forward to his reincarnation next trade period.

[Bomb_Doe]

@Saucy

I think people will be surprised by how few wins we get.

All I want to see is some of the kids getting consistent games this year.

I really don’t know where we sit on the timeline to becoming an excellent/finals competitive side. So yes, we could be in for very few wins as we go back to rebuilding the side. Or we are in the middle somewhere and the new recruits are positive additions who’ll give us a few more wins than in recent years and make us more consistent. Unlikely we are going to be the surprise packet of the comp and bound to the top tier this year.

I agree that we need to be playing the kids (newer and older) that we plan to build the side around and give them a lot of games, and importantly a lot of games together to build cohesion.

[Le_Archie]

Is there a @nackers report somewhere in here or did I miss it?

[Bomb_Doe]

…

@nackers

Training today in beautiful conditions.

The modified group was quite a lot smaller today consisting of Ridley, Perkins, Stringer, Ambrose, Zerk, Johnson, and McBride. Misiti also joined the modified group for a while. Heppell again completed nearly the whole session withthe main group with only a short spell in the modified towards the end.

None of the other JHA kids were there today but in some other injury news I heard that Tex Wanganeen has apparently done his navicular bone in his foot which is the reason for the moonboot. That would be very unfortunate for him and may have him missing most of the season.

Dylan Clarke also made his first appearance in a while, taking handballs and kicks at him from a chair, and later encouraging the boys on the ground during various drills while on crutches. Mossie was also there supporting from the sidelines.

The good news from the modified group is the pace from them was a bit higher today, with all of them out running and kicking to some degree rather than cycling with the possible exception of Stringer, who I can’t recall kicking and went back inside after about an hour or so, but overall they look in fairly good shape.

As mentioned earlier today we had Alec Waterman, Angus Baker and Charlie Byrne trying out for us. They weren’t always in the same group, at time on different ovals and didn’t do all the drills so I can’t say I had a really good look at any of them to make any worthwhile type of assessment.

Waterman is a very nuggety type, he could possibly do with losing a couple of kg’s which he would probably do on an AFL program fairly quickly. He looks quite similar to David Calthorpe which was mentioned by more than one person. He seemed neat enough with his ball handling and disposal from the small amount I saw of him without doing anything particularly special.

Baker is a bit bigger than the other two, around the 190 mark and was similar to Waterman in that he was neat enough but I didn’t see anything special.

I hardly noticed Byrne at all, he was often on the far side of the ground or other oval, but the others with me said he had a neat left foot kick.

Training today was again a mixture of various types of drills, before being split into two groups for a small match sim exercise on each oval, and then joining together together for a larger session on the main oval which was a bit closer to full ground length. Instead of starting the plays on the half back line they were started today closer to full back.

What was noticeable when using more of the ground was the number of short passes being used if there wasn’t a longer option available. They were generally taken fairly quickly and I thought not too many were backwards or sideways, most of them going at a 45 or to a loose player in front of the ball.

Overall it worked pretty effectively, with very few interceptions or turnovers, (or poor kicks for that matter). I’m not sure if that is our intended game plan or if it was just something we’re working on at the moment, but it has been a recurring theme during pre season.

In one of the drills where players collected the ball and were then immediately tackled while trying to evade the tackler Francis yelled an expletive when Heppell managed to get away, and then proceeded to bury his next 3 or 4 opponents very strongly. I was very happy to see how seriously he was taking it and the competitiveness he showed.

Tom Hird also performed well at this as the evader, at one stage running rings around Gleeson.

I haven’t got too much more to add today, I’ll blame @karmabomber who after taking a number of his no doubt excellent photos came over for an interesting chat on all things Essendon while nothing too special was happening out on the grounds.

I imagine the next session will be on Saturday again, i will try and get it confirmed.

[Houli_Dooli]

@nackers

What was noticeable when using more of the ground was the number of short passes being used if there wasn’t a longer option available. They were generally taken fairly quickly and I thought not too many were backwards or sideways, most of them going at a 45 or to a loose player in front of the ball.

I feel that is what we were attempting to do last year (early in the season) along with the running in waves and lots of handballs till you get to the free player.

[Aussi]

Really wish I knew how to do quote like the post above…

Thanks again @nackers for the report

[Le_Archie]

Amazing - thanks @nackers and @Bomb_Doe

[frosty]

“Reply”, then hit the speech bubble button (top left of the box that you type in) to bring up the entire message as a quote.

Or just highlight the bit you want to quote in the person’s post and a menu comes up. Choose “quote”. That opens the reply box with the quoted bit already there.

[Deckham]

@Aussi

Really wish I knew how to do quote like the post above…

Thanks again @nackers for the report

Hit ‘reply’ and then the little ‘chat’ icon top left of your reply box.

[Tippa-the-Iceberg]

Well yeah, that IS most likely 6 probably wins???

so 6 more IS possible if our list stays health.
12 wins COULD snag 8th.
Wow.

[Aussi]

@frosty

“Reply”, then hit the speech bubble button (top left of the box that you type in) to bring up the entire message as a quote.

Or just highlight the bit you want to quote in the person’s post and a menu comes up. Choose “quote”. That opens the reply box with the quoted bit already there.

Thanks, appreciate it.

[Bomb_Doe]