I'm in Melbourne to watch the game tomorrow night, so I came with a creative excuse at the office and trammed it down to Punt Road to catch a bit of training.
There were about 150 people there and we were all shepherded to the outer side of the oval as the grandstand is now a construction zone. I stopped in at the new Tiger Superstore on the way. Lots of goodies to spend some money on. I thought the member/coaches jackets were particularly swish. Also found out that the FTF accepts cash donations over the counter, so there went my play money.
Gus and Whitey were in rehab, the rest of the squad from last week were out there, joined by Ben Nason, Thursty, Ben Griffiths, Matt Dea, Tucky, Colin Miller and someone said Webbers, but I didn't see him. There was no other ruckman in the squad, so Gus must be okay for the game. It was interesting to see Axel and Cotch doing some special warm up running, backwards, prior to training starting. Must be something to do with getting the calves and achillies properly stretched, I guess.
All the coaches were out there, with Dimma calling most of the shots. Not like the TW days.
It was a light session up to the time that I left, which was after about 45 minutes. The main drills that they did were;
- Moving the ball up and down the ground in a single overlap series of plays. One handball to a single overlapper, followed by a pinpoint pass, either through the corridor or around the wing, generally determined by the "defensive" general. They took turns to play defensive general. The main let down was a couple of ordinary inside 50 passes. Jack and TV played forward at one end of the ground, Griffo and Miller at the other. No-one played defence, it was all attacking stuff. The passes that went awry were either along the ground or over the head of the leading player - and this with no pressure. I didn't catch who the offenders were.
- Handball exercises in a very tight groupd, followed by a snap on goal from one of the forwards. This looked like a scrimmage and moving the ball around it - again without anyone playing defense.
- Goal kicking, early on in the session, not after it was over, for the forwards and mids, while the backs concentrated on hitting targets from within the defensive 50. No goal kicking after running hard up and down the ground, mind you. I reckon kicking is that much hard when you're out of oxygen and your heart is beating 24 to the dozen. I think that's why so many regular shots are missed this year.
- I'm guessing that drills with some players in a defensive role would have come later, but I had to get back to the office. On the whole, I thought the group showed a much improved skillset, inside 50 passes not withstanding, and they looked a lot bigger than this time last year, (except for Robbie Nahas, who just looked tiny and skinny). The leadership group was quite vocal, but there were still a lot of quiet players out there.
One thing I did note, was that in the end-to-end movement drills, after each player had got rid of the ball, they didn't continue running down the ground to make multiple overlap options. I couldn't imagine the Skunks at training standing around after they released the ball at training - I reckon Mick would have them sprinting two lengths of the ground, just as standard practice. Do we have spies at other team's training? I reckon it might be instructive to see how the Skunks go about it.
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Anyway, sorry I couldn't stay longer and give a more comprehensive report, but I'd better get back to pretending to do some work as long as this mob pretends to pay me. Cheers.
