Unemployed and bored at the moment (anyone hiring?!) so I wandered over to watch the boys this morning.
apologies in advance if I missed your fav players but it was an interesting session in that there were many blokes that I did not see. And it was a bit odd this session in that a large chunk of the guys simply stopped training outside (they may have gone into the hangar or gym) but the remaining guys were those who are named for this weeks game bar a couple of extras.
Firstly, the modified group was just Myers. Who did a bit of kicking but mostly running. Joining him on what I believe is the rehab oval was Laverde. This did concern me, but fear not, I don’t think there was anything wrong with him, he was receiving one on one coaching about playing forward. Replacing him later was Begley, and so I suspect that one of the two will play this week.
The good news was that all of Hurley, Hooker and Bellchambers all completed training with the main group. Hurls was a bit rusty with disposal, but I think the overwhelming positives were that Hooker and Bellcho all trained with the main group. It wasn’t a particularly taxing session, as most of the drills involved moving the ball up and down the ground. But as is my wont, I paid most attention to Hooker. Now I understand that he will line up for the VFL in order to give him a shot at round 1. If he doesn’t make it, it won’t be for a lack of effort. He even did an extra session at the end with Bellcho in marking drills, as well on his own under the supervision of Skipworth and Crowe (and some other big rigged guy I don’t know), ran up and down the ground about half a dozen times with each run needing to be be below 19 secs. The coaches seemed happy with him. He wasn’t exactly clunking them all but a few nice grabs up against Hurley. The negatives on Hooksy is that he has an ugly kicking action for goal and I suspect between joey and him, we are going to waste some chances at goal.
Bellcho did some clearance work, but fair to say that his part in it was low key. The drill was more about the midfield set up around goals, and generating snaps on goal. Zach and Hepp were both impressive there. Interestingly for this drill which was towards the end of the session, both Watson and Leunberger walked off the track together. Nothing appeared wrong with either of them though so I guess it was just monitoring their workloads.
To the main drills, it was mostly about finding space in congestion as they narrowed the boundaries. The aim of the drill was to move the ball up and down the ground. There were two iterations of this, the first where the majority of the players participated, and the second when a fair chunk of the boys finished training on the oval. The following is a list of guys I neither saw or stood out. In no order Hocking, Bird, J Merrett, Redman, Francis, morgan, green, Ridley, Mutch, long, Clarke, draper, howlett, McKenna.
The guys that impressed by either their ball movement, evasiveness, or something else included Heppell who hopefully has removed all that rust, Goddard, Kelly, Merrett, McGrath, mckernan who looks agile, and Langford.
Stewart struggled a bit with marking, but made up for that in the kicking for goals drill. Daniher participated in full training and no issues with his kicking on the left. A few of the guys struggled with kicking into the wind but it was reasonably strong so bit tricky.
I don’t have any baseline to compare to other sessions this pre season, and had I known half the guys were going to go inside and leave this weeks squad out there to do more training, I might have paid more attention to the lesser light guys, but the sesh was in good spirits and there was some crisp ball movement and fast play ons.
Fantasia and tippa were having their own goal kicking comp between them, and tippa slotted one from about 40 metres out and 10 metres over the boundary, so let’s give him the win there.
All in all an enjoyable way to catch some sun, and it was a positive session so hopefully that sets us up for a good weekend ahead.
