Training this morning in pleasant conditions without a strong breeze. Amazingly enough the sun was even out for most of the session which has been a real rarity.
The session started at 11am and went for around 90 minutes. I missed the first half hour or so and seemed to spend most of my time in rather robust discussions about the team, so was probably not as attentive as usual. We were outside the fence again as it’s actually not a bad vantage point but I was told by the others that we are allowed inside again so we may go there in the future.
As often happens the first session after a game a number of players were on modified or restricted programs according to how they pulled up from the weekend:
- Draper, Caldwell, Shiel, Laverde, Heppell, Mo22ie, Redman, Baldwin and McBride - not sighted
- Langford, Wright - did some work early before going to the sidelines for exercises
- Cox, Jones, Eyre - mostly running before leaving the track early
- Gleeson - was inside the hanger but didn’t see him train
- Stewart - spent the session running but at quite a good pace, up to about 3/4 full speed. It’s hard to see him being another 7 weeks off the way he’s running but who knows, he looked fine just after doing the initial injury as well.
- Hurley - Spent a lot of time on the sidelines on the exercise bike. He’s not using crutches anymore and was looking very comfortable on the bike. His upper body physique also looks a lot better than I expected. I didn’t see him walking but one of the others said he still had a pronounced limp, but overall a considerable improvement from a few weeks ago.
- Phillips - was on the sidelines towards the end but didn’t see him train
- Guelfi - just some exercises on the sidelines
- Clarke - He did a lot of work with just himself and another trainer on the second oval. He seems to be making good progress
- Ambrose, Zakka, Stringer and Reid all completed the whole session, along with all the other players not mentioned. Reid still has a bit of a limp occasionally from the corkie he received a couple of weeks ago. Ambrose also doesn’t look too far off, he also did some extra running during the session.
Overall the session was very low key with little banter and mostly at a what we considered a rather leisurely pace. I don’t go to very many sessions mid season so don’t have a lot to compare it to, but others said while they are normally at a higher tempo it’s not completely unusual, and may be due to feedback from the playing group as a result of how they pulled up.
Most of the drills were broken up into smaller groups focusing mainly on skills without a lot of contested work. One of the exceptions was one on one marking from the key position players where they were jostling for position before Truck kicked pass to them. It was good to see Reid take a couple of nice marks against firstly Hooker then Bryan, although probably outpositioned on both occasions he had the height to take it in front. Hopefully we start to see some progress from Reid soon as I’ve been disappointed from his work so far in the seconds (which admittedly has been hampered by his corkie).
The session finished after most other players had left the track with a long series of one on one marking contests between Waterman and Hind, with the two probably breaking even or maybe a slight edge to Waterman. I took this in a completely uneducated guess to mean that Waterman may be being prepared for a debut this week. Or not. I guess we’ll find out in a few days time.
