I popped down to training this morning at Punt Rd Oval. Bloody freezing
but they still trained for the best part of 2 hours.
9 absentees today:
McGuane - saw him briefly walking about inside the rooms.
Jackson (?)
Hislop - LTIL
Thomson (?)
Moore - will be tested at training on Thursday. If he gets through that he'll play.
Foley - ankle still playing up
Dea - foot injury. Walked out for a few minutes at the end to watch training. Seemed to have a slight limp.
Taylor (?)
Westhoff (?)
Polak training fully and with no helmet. He didn't appear to have problems out there.
The warm-up was lengthy as you'd expect on a cold day. Don't need anyone pulling a hammy or whatever. Good voice and enthusiasm (Jack's voice you can't miss) yelling out to the group to not go easy and be lazy (ie. make sure leg lifts went as high as possible etc).
On training itself there was a lot of game specific work especially to counter the Swans scrummage rugby gamestyle and also if Sunday turns out to be wet.
They started off with forming small circles and rolling the ball towards each other to gather off the ground. This was followed by three separate groups whereby the first group near us would form attacker/defender pairs and the ball would be rolled 20m along the ground towards the boundary and the attacker had to gather and while be corralled hit a trainer 25m along the boundary line or 25m back inside towards the corridor. Benny Gale who was explaining the drill to some visitors said the drill was also designed to teach the defender how to pressure but no overcommit and get dodged around too easily. The second group on the outer wing were lined up in a row and each player took turns to bust through about four bags being thumped against them and then dish off a handpass to the trainer waiting at the end. The last group also formed attacker/defender pairs and each would face each other pushing the other in the chest and upper arms and then the attacker would gather a ball along the ground.
Next up the group came together to work on stoppages particularly ball-ups. They had 20 or os around the ball so very Swans' gamestyle like.
The rest of training was more standard full ground rebounding work we normally do combined with 1-on-1s match-ups right across the park.
This was a public session btw so we're obviously going into the game with nothing to hide.
Any questions just fire away
ps. Griffiths is a big boy when he stands next to you
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