Training today was at a warm Vic Park today. It started around 11am and went to about 12.30. We found a convenient spot to watch the session where you can hear everything but more on that later.
In rehab were Cotch (left early again), Patto and Petts from what I saw. A friend said she spoke to Cotch on Friday and he told her he's improving. He had no support on the ankle or achillies when she spoke to him. Cotch didn't mention a return date. Round 4 is what she's heard. From what I saw everyone else trained although Richo only trained for the first couple of drills while and Newy and Sugar didn't join in the last drill.
Onto training and the first drill they were doing when I arrived had the squad split into two with small groups running and linking up via handball while "defenders" with tackle bags tried to bump them and force errors. After Sunday it was great to see more handball lol.
The whole squad then moved into the centre of the ground for a chat with the coaches and then got into the next drill which was to work on hitting up a leading target by foot. Basically we had players running through the centre and then drilling 40-50m passes to forwards leading out from the square. A few sloppy kicks that ended up at the feet but obviously the coaches also saw that our entries inside 50 on Sunday weren't enough and up to scratch.
The rucks - Simmo, Putt, Gus, Vickery and Browne - by this stage had split from the main group and were working on body positioning in ruck and marking contests with Rawlings and Monkhurst. Simmo shows his experience in these situations although the young guys like Browne showed they have good hands. As I mentioned in the player photo thread Vickery can leap higher than most players and certainly got off the ground more than Monky lol. Poor Gus had the marking yips today with the yellow footy. He was the last off the training track because he didn't leave until he started hanging onto his marks. Thursty and JON later joined them with Thursty acting as a close defender on Simmo and Gus when practising their marking on the lead. Simmo said it better having someone to compete with while Thursty said this sort of practice helps with his timing.
Back to the main squad and after another chat in the centre of the ground they added run and carry to the previous drill of hitting up leading targets in the forward. Starting from CHB a player would to someone in the centre of the ground and then run on to receive the handball and then fire a 50m pass to the leading forward. These drills really show up who has the best skills with Cuz and Lids the standouts. Out of the newbies Gilligan was very clean with is disposal. They stood out to be honest as nearly every attempted run involved at least one skill error (mostly errors were kicks landing at the shoelaces). Schulz yelled out "F---" when Jacko's pass missed him. Jay then missed the goal
and a friend said he missed it because he was still peeed off about the pass lol. One run had 4 errors out of 5 disposals including the forward missing the goal
. Hopefully just February rustiness.
Midway through the players had to do a lap around the boundary before getting back into it. I heard Plough from our handy viewing spot tell Jordie to lift his training performance (which he did as on his next run he hit all his targets). Connors must have broken a team rule because Terry told him off - "it's about the team not just you" and Daniel then ran a lap around the boundary back to the exit and we didn't see him again. Mind you at the end of this drill the squad thinned out to what looked like most of those who played on Sunday plus Cousins, Vickery, JON and Thursty. I'm guessing they could come into the squad against Collingwood. The coaches were pretty happy with how the boys executed the drill at the end of it.
The final drill was just the usual mark, run and kick. They then finished off with some goalkicking. Cuz did the whole session. Ch 10 news tonight claimed "he's flying". We'll see how he goes in a week's time.
Any questions just fire away. Photos to come.
