Is that Hirdy?
been about an hour now, this is gonna be long…
I was actually thinking it’s that windy out at tulla players are getting skydiving 
face
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I can’t help but think that we need to always have a Baker on our list.
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You strike me as someone who sees people having fun and a laugh and would want to put a stop to it
Lighten up
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Why are we hyping up a ■■■■ version Ricky Dyson?
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That was before his U18 year though…a chance he could have shaved a tenth off
Edit: seems he’s shaved 0.14 off. Good start.
What gives you that impression son?
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.
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I guess no news is good news (i.e. no reports of someone hobbling off injured)
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Thanks @nackers.
Any idea what’s up with Perkins, Ridley and Stringer?
The modified group is small but very significant.
Every session that goes by at this stage of the year without an injury is a small win.
To say conditions were ideal is interesting. An easterly wind has been blowing a gale all day in the south eastern suburbs, so maybe Tullamarine is protected from easterlies, but open to north and westerlies.
navicular?
same as Hirdy’s injury isn’t it?
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Can we get @theDJR to comment on the prevalence of easterlies in Melbourne in general, and Tulla in particular?
To me it feels like training in an easterly will be counter productive, although we might go ok is we have an early game in Perth.
I was very surprised, it was blowing a gale on the peninsular this morning.
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Thanks again mate. Rapt to hear that Heppell is progressing well (along with Francis for that matter). Hopefully Ridley, Stringer, Perkins, etc are back into full training next week.
Do you remember seeing if Cox was on a wing during the match sim? And whether Cahill & Stewart were still being used in defence?
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