Training today was an early start (9am) at Vic Park. More milder temperatures than compared to last week's scorchers although it still got hot when the sun was fully out. The session went for just under 2 hours.
The only media was a photographer taking snaps from the stands until a helicopter turned up and kept doing laps of Vic Park in the air for about 10 minutes. Someone must have forgotten to tell them it was an open session lol. About 20-30 fans turned up to watch.
In the rehab group were:
Petts and Sugar who did some laps. Sugar apparently hurt himself at training on Monday and had a bandage around his knee.
Cotch once again did hardly anything. A couple of laps plus some ball-handling and that's about it. He has no strapping around the achillies so he looks fine but he's just not training.
No sign of Tambo or Thursty today. I don't remember JON either but I'll have to check the photos to be sure.
Training itself began with a warm-up kick to kick before they got into the first drill which was a standard pick up a rolling ball along the ground, handball off and then run to the next mark where you then mark and footpass to a teammate.
The next drill was about quick running and movement of footy from one end of Vic Park to the other. Each player had to start at one end of the ground with the footy and then footpass to a teammate who in turn would pass it to someone else inside the centre square. By the time this 3rd guy gained possession the first player would have had to sprint towards him in readiness for the handball receive and then footpass it off again to someone at the opposite end of the ground and then they would repeat the process the other way and have two footys going at once in each direction. This drill seemed made for the upcoming game on the spacious Subiaco Oval. Fairly cleanly done although Jack had a case of the fumbles until he warmed up.
Next up was some match simulation. The main squad was split into 3 groups - 2 groups of forwards/backs at either end of the ground plus the rucks/mids in the centre with one 'team' in white jumpers and the other in blue singlets.
They would continually swap jumpers and singlets to mix the match-ups up but in the group closest to the Sherrin Stand we had the following match-ups:
HF: Riewoldt up high @ CHF / Polak Hislop
Moore/Schulz/McGuane Rainesy
F: Morton Post/Gourdis/Hughes Nahas
McGuane/Bowden Silvester/Schulz/Moore King/Rainesy
It was really great seeing Polly involved in contact work although he never copped any heavy stuff. Most of the forward/defender work was more one-on-one with the forward leading up or out wide to mark the footy.
In the centre we had the rucks Simmo, Gus, Patto and Vickery from what we could see tap it out to various combinations of match-ups out of midfielders Jacko, Foley, Tuck, Lids, Cuz, Cogs, Whitey, Browny. It was a bit of a heart in mouth moment when Cuz was tackled awkwardly around the upper legs/hips while he was kicking the footy at full stretch but he was fine and he got the next clearance from the next ball-up. Whitey, Tucky, Foley and Cogs looked good. Richo of course is now part of the midfield group these days
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In the main the skills were fairly clean although there were some grubbers. I was told by a friend that in their first scratch match 2 weeks ago the skills were pretty same old ordinary but the scratch match last week was better. My only criticism today was we passed wide into the pockets a bit too much although Morton especially, Nahas and Hislop made the most of it getting their hands on the footy and kicking goals. Gus was putting one hand on the bag in the ruck. He won't be able to do that against an opponent's shoulder or he'll give away free kicks.
After the match simulation it was time for tackling drills under McRae's instruction. They got into pairs and threes and focussed on both pinning both arms as well as pinning one arm and dragging the player to the ground.
And that was it. Whitey, Gus, Morton, Cleve, Browny, Cuz and a few others stayed out longer with David King having nearest to the pin pot shots from the boundary. Clever was also going through his normal goalkicking practice routine.
Photos hopefully to come. Cheers.
