Brown's focus on round one
11:40:39 AM Wed 25 January, 2006
Angus Morgan
Sportal for afl.com.au
Mercurial forward Nathan Brown remains hopeful of taking his place in the Tigers line-up for the opening round clash against the Western Bulldogs.
Brown, whose 2005 season was cut short by a nasty broken leg suffered against Melbourne in round 10, remains on a restricted program.
At training at Victoria Park on Wednesday morning, Brown joined in the warm-ups before moving aside to work on his goalkicking while the rest of the squad engaged in simulated match practice using the entire ground.
After half-an-hour he retired to the massage table for some physiotherapy on his calf, ankle and achilles.
Brown said he's been taking it easy on Wednesdays to keep him fresh for the club's Monday and Friday training runs.
"Hopefully over the next month or so I will be able to step it up to three full sessions, but at the moment two sessions is a helluva lot more than I've been doing," he said.
"It's been a long, long road so far, but I'm looking forward to hopefully getting back in round one."
Brown told Sport 927 he would take part in the NAB Cup only if the Tigers happened to make the Grand Final, but would look to get involved in practice matches heading into the season proper.
"I would like to play a half and then a full game before round one. I'm not going to go into round one without footy under my belt," he said.
Veteran defenders Mark Chaffey - who will be awarded life membership of the club at the Richmond AGM to be held tonight - and Darren Gaspar and youngster Richard Tambling joined Brown on the sidelines during match practice, where there was little body contact and the focus was on hitting targets.
Chris Newman, skipper Kane Johnson, Joel Bowden and Shane Tuck were standouts during the session.
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