Just got back from watching training. Would've been home earlier if a truck hadn't hit the Swan St bridge shutting down the trains at Richmond station
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Anyway, Dimma and the coaches certainly didn't ease the boys back into the new preseason. It was a full-on 140 minute session!
The most pleasing thing was to see many senior blokes at training along with the 1-4 year players. Hopefully a sign the hunger is back and they're on a mission for redemption in 2022.
Present at training from what I saw (I still need to check my photos later in case I missed someone):
Ross, Baker, Short, Aarts, Lynch, Caddy, Lambert, Nank, RCD, Dow, Mansell, Ryan, Graham, Broad, Martyn, Stack, Ralphsmith, Miller, Maurice Rioli, Parker, Cumberland and Tarrant.
Biggie was there early on but didn't train and disappeared after warm up.
Absent:
I presume the other WA boys are still over there - Bolton and McIntosh.
Obviously Prestia and Balta are in isolation with covid.
Colina will still be in Hawaii.
Also didn't see Floss, Grimesy, Dusty, Jack (see other thread), Cotch, Edwards, Castagna, D.Rioli and Soldo.
Training was a mixture of shuttle runs, tackling drills, handball and kicking games.
Lambert, Graham, Short and Dow trained away from the main group and did their own thing. Initially ran a few laps followed by different distance shuttle runs.
In the main group's shuttle runs they split the talls away from the main group. In the main group, RCD and Ross (I think he was one in the cap) were up the front. I remember one of coaches from the boundary near me yell out praise to Ross. At the rear was Maurice (second last) with Stack last and falling well behind with each lap. The person I spoke to said Syd was 'closer' to the others than previous first days of preseason so that was a positive apparently lol.
The "kicking games" was about dealing with the stand rule (offensively more so than defensively). Starting at one end of the ground, there were a lot of 45 degree kicks on the spread before then a final long kick to a player who would act as a defensive interceptor and then they repeat the process in the other direction.
Near the end of training, Maurice went off to the bench walking gingerly. He laid down on his front and a trainer was working on his leg(s). Not sure what was wrong. Hopefully nothing too serious.
I took some photos but they were from distance and through the mesh fence. So when my phone is recharged I'll see how they turn out.
Any questions fire away.
