Went and had a look at training this morning. With a few new faces it took a while to work out who was missing and who was there. Being covered in hats and sunscreen didn't make it any easier either, but I'm pretty sure the following were no shows: Pendlebury, Broomhead, Reid, Toovey, Abbott, Moore and Greenwood. Mantiet I'm not sure about. He may or may not have been there. I was interested to see him, but couldn't pick him out.
I did spot Greenwood and Pendlebury late in the session, so they may have been working inside.
They did about an hour of warmups and running drills. Straight line running of which most players completed. Caff was probably the only one at that stage who did laps. Swan and Scharanberg did all the running with the main group. Once finished, they settled into running laps only.
There were a few guys whose day consisted a pretty much running only. Swan, Scharanberg, Macaffer, Marsh, Fasolo and Sinclair. At various stages they were joined by Young, Seedsman and Mason Cox. Swanny ran himself into the ground. Worked really hard varying it up between jogging laps and some sprints. Macaffer and Scharanberg were interesting to watch. I thought Caff looked a lot stronger and fitter. Scharanberg definately huffing and puffing a lot more than Caff.
The ball drills were a little hard to keep an eye on as they did most of them in 3 different groups. One of the drills involved a Key Forward and a Key Back competing in the air with a couple of blokes competing for the crumbs. I took most notice of the competing between the big guys. Trav monstered almost all comers as expected, except for Nathan Brown. Was good to see Browny win nearly every one on one he contested. Grundy also did well in this as a forward. Took some good grabs . Keeffe and Gault were the two who struggled in this. Beaten most times. Keeffe told several times to stop holding. No Jack Frost or Jesse White.
There were some clearance/ball movement drills in groups of about 8 a side. Without over analysing things too much, there were a few guys who did things that stood out to me. Goodyear loves being in the thick of it. Travis was beastly all session. Ran at the front of his group every time and worked really hard. Sam Dwyer trained with the main group all session and was prominent. Again, was impressed with Brown in the competitive stuff
Mason Cox was having a few shots t goal from about 35-40. Managed to kick most of them. A bit up and under, but from where he started, an improvement. He wasn't involved in any of the ball drills that I recall, so an obvious work in progress.
After all the discussion about Karnezis and Kennedy from the other day, I was keen to see how they went. Not much to say really. Both trained the whole session with the main group and nothing notably stood out about either. They ran with the others just fine and worked in the drills quite well. So did Josh Thomas who someone else noted ran laps only on Monday.
Any questions I'm happy to try and answer, but the short, sharp, tight drills make it hard for blokes to stand out too much.
Really can't wait to see some full ground match practice. Its going to be interesting to see where all these guys will fit in.