Training was at a coolish Vic Park today with even the occasional light rain falling (rain what's that
). The squad was late arriving and didn't get onto the track until around 10.30pm so a few of us displayed our esquisite footy skills prior to the start of training to show how it's done
. They finished up just after midday.
In rehab was Petts who did a fair bit of running, Sugar, and of course Cotch although once again apart from some reflex handball with a trainer he mainly watched training before leaving. A supporter asked Trent when he'll be back and he said maybe round 1. Cogs was around the place in casuals.
As for training itself, apart from the usual light kicking and handballing stuff, the first main drill they worked on was some match simulation from stoppages and rebounding out of defence and then moving the ball up to the forwards. They had a rotation of 'teams' going so it was like watching two games inside each other. Cousins was pretty much rested for this and his only participation was to kick the ball into play to start the rebounding drills.
The forward/defender match-ups I can remember were as follows:
HF: Riewoldt Connors
HB: Schulz
F: Morton Hughes Post
Moore McGuane
HF: JON Nahas
HB: Rance King/Silvester
F: Gilligan Gourdis Patto
B: Moore McGuane
Richo, Hislop and the usual midfield suspects were in the midfield groups. It looked like Jacko, Edwards and Johnson were being used as taggers.
The other match simulation drill they worked on was the kick-ins. Especially what looked like kicking-in into a cluster zone. They had Newy, Lids and Jordie doing the kick-ins. Newy appeared the more successful as he can mix up the normal spot-up passes inside the defensive 50 with the long torps that go over the bulk of the cluster. You get into trouble when you short pass wide into the pocket and then are forced to switch across the last line of defence and back again. As Jordie found out it leads to a turnover because you can't outflank or break through the zone that way.
After finishing the match simulations drills the whole squad did some goalkicking on the run within the forward 50 at the Sherrin stand end of Vic Park.
Any questions just fire away
. Photos to come.
