Training Report 5/1/2009

Drummond · 5 Jan 2009, 17:06

I rocked up at about 3:20 and the players were already out there and in a huddle with Craigy. I was struck by how many players were participating in the drills as there seemed to be only 2 or 3 players away from the main group. Will Gun, err Young, ran a few laps and I don’t think he participated in the session. I was impressed by Johncock prior to the Christmas break but unfortunately the news isn’t so good now. He appears to have put on a fair bit of weight and it’s got to be disappointing for the coaching staff and the players. Maybe I’m overreacting and maybe he was in this physical shape 2-3 weeks ago but he just seems heavier than he was on previous viewing. I've got photographic evidence that I'll post in a sec.

I was impressed with a few players…

Dangerfield looked really good, extremely quick and strong in the air. Doesn’t seem to be hampered by injury at all which is a good sign. His full speed is something to be seen and he now slows down when he’s about to kick by taking small steps and balancing himself, it’s good to see. Kite looks impressive, as does Armstrong. Walker was good again and even speared a few passes on his left. The players were in a huddle and one player would take a shot on goal as they all watched. It was Walks’ turn and Craigy went right up to him and had a few words in his ear as Taylor was lining up. He had a few shots and seemed to drill most.

I have been talking up the smoothness of Tommy Lee but admittedly he didn’t look quite as smooth across the ground today. Not sure why that was but he does appear to have bulked up already and perhaps he’s coming to grips with the extra weight? Maybe he just was a bit fatigued from the 3k run earlier in the day and he was a bit low on energy.

McKernan always leaves me scratching my head a bit because he’ll be real impressive one minute and not so the next. One area for improvement is his kicking over short distances as you’ll often see him try to kick a short 20 metre pass to a teammate but it’ll end up missing them by a fair distance. I’m not a big fan of his ball drop it must be said. His marking is certainly very impressive though and he extends his hands quite a bit and has such a strong grip on the ball. It’ll be hard for defenders to spoil the ball with his reach and sticky fingers.

You can’t help but me impressed with Mackay and Petrenko. Mackay has bulked up significantly and he’s always in the thick of the drills. I’m growing more of a fan each time I see him. Petrenko is a tank and I see him playing in Round 1 this year. He is free of any shoulder strapping and looks really smooth and strong. Can't believe he's a second round rookie selection!

Myke Cook has quality written all over him and I suspect he’ll play a few games this year. He moves like Jericho but thankfully with more intensity. I’ve said it a few times before but he has really stacked on the weight and he’ll certainly be playing a lot of league footy for South Adelaide this season, hopefully from the outset. He does have good foot skills and he is strong in the air. He might have received the least amount of fanfare of anyone on our list but he’s definitely one to be excited about.

Again I was impressed with Ricky Henderson. His foot skills are quite good and he’s a tremendous athlete. Donnelly has a long, long way to go and his kicking is pretty poor, failing to hit targets over 20 metres. It’s to be expected but where will he play this season? I’m not even sure he’s good enough to play in the reserves but now there’s only an U/18 and he’s too old for that…

Chris Schmidt looked 10x better than he did before Christmas. In hindsight he was always going to feel a little out of place in the session before the break because he was only just drafted a few days beforehand and he probably only met the players on that day. He looked really good today, moved well and looked far more active. They did this drill where the goal was to kick a goal at goal post height. A player with possession was running towards goal and met by Craig who was applying defensive pressure, and their job was to dish off a handball to a streaming player who would kick a goal, at goal post height. On one occasion Schmidt made a really nice move, looked to be dishing one way but spun around and fooled Craig and fired off a handball. He got a few compliments as a result.

Brodie Martin is still tiny and is easily the smallest guy out there. For a mature aged rookie and one who has been on the list for over 12 months now, he should be more physically advanced. I don’t see him making much of an impact and ever getting upgraded unless he starts to bulk up and look more AFL ready.

Sellar stayed back pretty late and was working on his overhead marking while Moss, pretty sure it was him, defended. Mackay was delivering the passes while the two would battle it out and it looked like a pretty even battle but Jimmy did take a few strong grabs as you would expect over a small opponent. Moss had a good session though and a few times got compiments from the playing group for making good decisions in one particular drill.

McKernan, Davis, Gallman and Schmidt stayed back a little while as they attempted to kick goals from right on the boundary line. There was a pretty difficult breeze at the time too which made it exceptionally hard to kick a goal. Schmidt stuck with the drop punt for most of the time and was the closest almost every time. Gallman continued to spray it all over the place and he let his disappointment be known. McKernan was okay, some very close and quite a few OOF. Craigy had a lot of words for him, mainly on his ball drop and after he had a long chat Shaun booted one OOF. Schmidt ended up kicking one, I think Gallman got one too, Davis came close a few times and McKernan came pretty close at the end too.

I think that’s about it. There were a lot of players I didn’t pick up today but I probably wasn’t looking as hard as I usually do. It wasn’t a very long session at all and they didn't do anything overly challenging. They pretty much just took it easy this afternoon.

Riggy1 · 5 Jan 2009, 17:17

Great report

. Could you get the photos up.

Drummond · 5 Jan 2009, 17:26

Didn't take many photos, battery died, and most of the ones I did take weren't too flash. The fact that BigFooty squishes the photos makes them look worse. These ones will do...

Walker

Henderson

Lee

SAAndy · 5 Jan 2009, 17:33

Geez Stiffys got a beer belly!

BringbacktheBiff2005 · 5 Jan 2009, 17:37

Let's hope it is a grant hackett style photo...

**Chief** · 11 Jan 2009, 23:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Drummond

The fact that BigFooty squishes the photos makes them look worse.

Right-click -> View Image

BringbacktheBiff2005 · 5 Jan 2009, 17:30

Bloody fantastic report drum. I can't wait for the first game!!!

Being sellar's harshest critic, how do you think he is travelling?

Also, on the news tonight they made mention of how good hentschel is looking
Would be good hear your thoughts on him?

ronnie1234 · 5 Jan 2009, 17:32

Is it me? or is johncock's stomach starting to get bigger?

Scott Van Persett · 5 Jan 2009, 17:37

Good report, Drummond.

It's really hard to take notice of everyone at training but did you notice Tippett as he injured his knee just before Christmas.

It's difficult to think Johncock could go backwards in such a short time. Was he just breathing out when you took the photo. Remember the photo of Grant Hackett pre-Olympics

Scott

**cmndstab** · 5 Jan 2009, 17:53

Hey, nice work Drums

I was also at training but I'm afraid I have very little to say. I was late in coming, after taking a detour to pick up my camera. I may as well not have bothered because I got there, pulled it out, lined up my first shot and ran out of battery power

Right after that, Drummond's camera ran out of power. I tried my phone but then that ran out of battery power. It's like we were cursed or something.

By the time I got there it was quarter to four and contrary to what my secret contract (I've gotta give him a name one day) had told me, they were out before half past, so I missed the first thirty minutes of the training sessions. By around 4:10 they were starting to finish up so I really only saw 25 minutes of training, followed by half an hour or so of kicking practise and the like.

It was kind of amusing standing right behind Gallman, McKernan, Davis and Schmidt as they tried to kick the goal from the pocket. I believe Schmidt actually got the goal two times, not once as indicated by Drummond, but I could be mistaken. It was funny because Drum had a couple of friends there and one was telling us how they should do it and we were urging him to go and lecture Craigy about it. He didn't, but as soon as the boys packed up he went up to the same spot as the players and booted a goal instantly

McKernan is frightening. He's already, what, 95kg? The dude looks like a stick figure from the waste up, obviously all that weight is in his legs. When his body fills out he's going to be enormous. You always hear about his huge hands but Christ, when he opens them up in front of you to catch the ball, they look like baseball mitts. His kicking for goal didn't seem too bad, and even though not many went in from the pocket, they were generally pretty close and looked to have a decent trajectory. Davis' much-touted kicking skills didn't do much for him from the pocket, but he did better than Gallman at least

Davis is another one that could do to bulk up a bit, but unlike McKernan, he doesn't have the broad shoulders that look like they're just waiting for 10 kilos of muscle to pop underneath each one. Davis is still pretty heavily taped up, hopefully that clears up soon. I didn't see Burton but apparently he had only one small bit of taping so that's a good sign. Apparently (according to Drummond's friend) Porps and Danger were both involved in full competitive training which is just a fantastic sign. I was starting to worry that Dangerfield might struggle to get back in full shape before the end of our relatively short preseason but apparently he was good today. I barely saw him. By the time I got to actually attempting to recognise players, he was already gone. Another one that impressed me just in terms of his body was Lee. For some reason I had him pegged as skinny but he didn't look out of place running around with the boys out there, and he's got a bit of a barrel chest. Perhaps he's bulked up in the last few weeks?

My boy Sloaney was running around there today looking mightily impressive, though right after I rocked up he ran right past me in a drill and rifled a ball right over the head of the guy he was kicking too. He's really got a nice body size already though and seems to have nice skills.

Donnelly was running around today, though I didn't pay a lot of attention to him. At one point he was involved in a similar drill to the one I mentioned with Sloane above and he sprayed his kick terribly. A short while later they were doing the drill again, and he kicked to Moran, a lovely kick. Moran apparently is a pretty quiet dude and doesn't really like to talk to others much during training (he once almost barreled me over when I accidently got in his way while he was running laps!) but he turned straight around and yelled out "Lovely long kick Brian!" or something like that in encouragement, which is good to see.

I've loved the look of Petrenko right back from before the 07 draft but geez, he's looking better every time I see him. He's got a devilish beard going and has bulked right up, he looks downright intimidating now. Seems to have fit right in with the group.

Sellar still has a long way to go it seems, but the good news is I've now been to four training sessions and he's stayed late for all of them. Maybe he's finally got the message that he needs to do a lot more than he's been doing the past couple of years. I wish I'd got there early enough to watch him closely for a while to see how he went. Apparently a couple of his kicks during the drills earlier were pretty poor though.

Anyway, I have other thoughts but they've mostly been touched on by Drummond already and I don't have anything new to say, so I'll leave it there. It was fun but it was too short! I might head back down again in a week or two.

Who's going to the Thursday afternoon session?

The Sloane Ranger · 5 Jan 2009, 18:07

sounds like some real good signs from Petrenko and Dangerfield, there speed will be very important in 2009 and lets hope Stiffy's conditioning is not as bad as the photos look

great report

smileatme · 5 Jan 2009, 18:19

Good report better than the Tv news you should go for a job, although if you wanted to make the tabloids you could have said Johncock was pregnant. If he doesn't do something soon he may play more games for the magpies.

SAAndy · 5 Jan 2009, 18:12

You city guys are lucky to turn up for tranings

**cmndstab** · 5 Jan 2009, 18:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by SAAndy

You city guys are lucky to turn up for tranings

Tell me, how big is Naracoorte? Just wondering if you knew some girl I know that was from there

But yes, we are lucky. I'm surprised how I've been enjoying going. I reckon I'll probably make it at the very least a fortnightly thing... though that doesn't mean much now that we go back in a month's time!!

SAAndy · 5 Jan 2009, 18:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by cmndstab

Tell me, how big is Naracoorte? Just wondering if you knew some girl I know that was from there

But yes, we are lucky. I'm surprised how I've been enjoying going. I reckon I'll probably make it at the very least a fortnightly thing... though that doesn't mean much now that we go back in a month's time!!

Its about 5 000 people so it's accually a big town but I don't even live in Naracoorte I live on a farm and whos that girl you know? I might know her!