Summary of Dimma's interview the other night....
* Gerard Healy started by commenting about how quiet we've been as a club over the past month. Dimma agreed saying it probably reflects that we've got a lot more hard work ahead of us to get ourselves up the ladder. It's heads down and backsides up at this stage.
* Great thing about players these days unlike in his and Healy's day is the players come back cherry ripe apart from the odd exception here and there. Our boys came back in good shape and it's just more about just topping them up in certain areas. This allows us to get the balls out sooner and being able to include more running in our drills.
* Boys raised $5000 for charity by singing the national anthem at the Races.
* Dimma believes he is a lot better coach after (another) 12 months. His preparation has improved. All of this preseason was planned and the programs mapped out before they went on their offseason break. One thing he has learnt is you can never be too well prepared.
* Players are so professional now they take reasonable care of themselves. Dimma made the point to players to invest in themselves. On your break go away and find the best people to help you improve say your speed, agility, strength, etc... Use the camp facility in Arizona which we'll be using going forward to your advantage.
* Preseason gets harder for the older players. Newy's program is tapered for instance as the longer we have Newy around playing the better our team will be. We have the 2nd youngest list so it's not a major issue for us at this stage but Geelong for instance managed their list by rotating their players and no doubt other clubs will in time follow a similar policy.
* Not too sure or concerned when his contract renewal will be done. He mainly wants to see us trending upwards first. Still along way from those top 4 sides. We got within 20 points against Carlton in the first game but then lost by 100 in the other. Need to find that consistency and fortitude to be able to challenge those top 4-5 sides. It's something we want to work on and to rectify in 2012.
