Training today was a Punt Road oval. A fairly long one too as it went for 2 hours (11am - 1pm).
Everyone was present except for Lids who as mentioned was crook with a stomach bug as well as Thursty and Sarge for obvious reasons.
The whole squad started off with a 10-15m agility run through a line of cones followed by a 3-on-2 handball drill over 20m. When a handball or two missed the mark Wallace and then Royal stepped in and stopped the drill and told them all to "watch their skills" and "it's a simple skill". Overall fairly well done by all.
For the next drill the dquad split into two at either end of the centre square for a straight line mark and kicking on the run drill. They performed the drill for about 10 minutes and I'd reckon there was only 6 errors (3 dropped marks, 2 too short kicks, 1 wide kick) which was good to see. Knobel took one off his toes on the run which got applause from Wallace. Overall not perfect by any means as some kicks were low or high which forced the marker to stop and prop instead of staying in motion but it was clean.
Wallace and coaching staff then put the boys through two quarters of match practice. Kel Moore did runs along the boundary and 3 players waited on the sidelines and rotated during the game. After any score it was a kick-in so it was sometimes hard to tell if a goal or point had been scored. Here's roughly the score:
Yellows 2.1-13 (Tuck, Jacko)
Blacks 3.4-22 (Johnson, Tambling, Meyer).
Meyer took the mark 60m out on a HFF then ran in and around two yellows and sank one from 50m. Very nice goal that received alot of vocal praise and high-5's from his teammates.
Blacks Yellows
15. Newman 6. Chaffey
12. Gas 33. Browny
27. Raines 8. Roach
5. Simmonds 10. Staff
17. Johnson -. J.Bowden
19. Limbach 2. Richo
21. Tuck 13. Knobel
22. Meyer 14. Polo
26. Pattison 1. Pettifer
30. Tambling 39. P.Bowden
31. Hyde 18. Rodan
32. Tivendale 20. Hall
7. Hartigan 11. Jackson
34. Hughes 24. Coughlan
-. Kellaway 4. Krakouer
42. Humm 29. Oakley-Nicholls
44. Howat 45. White
35. Coburg pl. 37. Casserley
13. Graham 38. McGuane
41. Foley
Nothing much that was too different from the Saints game. Plenty of run and carry with a few turnovers chucked in. Hyde was very good with some attacking runs through the centre. Foley tried the same a couple of times but got caught twice.
Match-ups: Richo v Gas; Tambo v Roach; Graham v Hall; Limbach v McGuane; Chaffey v Howat; Pettifer v Newman; Rodan v Tivs; Hyde v Cogs;
Polo went off and inside the rooms. Came out feeling his upper leg. Not sure there's any damage but I overheard the trainer say to Dean if he wasn't right to take a week off. He went back in then came out with an icepack.
After the scratch match, the squad spilt into 3 groups with one doing goalkicking and the other two on the wings working on 6-on-6 ball-up and throw in set-ups and midfield transitional play where each 6 man team worked the footy to a player standing inside of square of cones in each pocket. There seemed to be an emphasis on finding guys with long kicks running towards goal. A number of "over the top of the opposition" kicks to a teammate on goal side of his opponent. One of Sugar's passes was brilliant. Long to Foley who didn't have to break stride
.
Each group then rotated. Richo interestingly started in one of the midfield groups (where he rucked lol) and hardly did any goalkicking from memory.
And that was roughly two hours.
Photos to come
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