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It was another frustrating period on the injury front this year, with an elbow hyper-extension in the opening round of the WAFL colts season causing Carter plenty of grief.
I love you. Awesome work
Oh yeah, I looked back on the Wed photo, it is bandaged. Hadn't notice before. Sorry don't know anything about that. Hopefully, his elbow has healed, it certainly seemed to restrict him during the championships by the looks. (just as well for us really)
Decided to check out training for the first time this pre-season. Wasn't expecting to see any great 'signs' for our next season but found it to be a pretty good session to attend. Lots of people watching and a really nice day for it.
Somewhat good news is we only appear to have a handful in rehab and none of them look as serious as we've had in past pre-seasons. Think Hogan was the only one I didn't spot - he may have made an appearance, I just didn't see him. If Bell hadn't spoken about Hilly I would've assumed he was just on a modified program to build up from - clearly something they need to fix but he was smashing out the laps. Mundy and Walters also on modified programs but I didn't see anything that caused major alarm bells - Walters had a fair bit of strapping but was moving fine. Darcy, Meek, Tucker and someone I didn't recognise under their hat (wasn't Shultz like I first thought - fairly certain it was Colyer now) also just doing running. BHill, Cerra and Conca also did some extra running during the match sims.
Bennell training with the main group, looking unhindered and right in amongst it in match sims is probably the most exciting thing today. He really is a wildcard for us if he can stay on the park. Crossing fingers we can see a transformed forward line with him, Hogan and Lobb all lining up together sometime early in the coming season. That is three pretty massive potential inclusions - particularly Lobb who is simply massive. Didn't notice Rory a lot today but he moves well for a big guy. Tabs looked beast like today and was just a dominant presence in the match sims. Still stuffs around too much with ball in hand down field (seems to always turn toward the boundary line, turning his back on the field) but the good money is still on him being in the team in Round 1. I'm a big fan of Switkowski and he's looking far more comfortable in the team now. Plays intuitively and has some serious wheels when he needs. Ballas on the other hand was woeful. I reckon you could have asked him to hit a barn 25m out today and he would have found a way to miss it. As others have said before Matera looks fitter this pre-season. And anyone thinking McCarthy hasn't trimmed down obviously hasn't seen him in the flesh. He's a long way from Michelangelo's David but heaps better than where he was.
It's probably the first time I have watched match sims at Cockburn where I haven't noticed Fyfe - mainly because he normally just goes into beast mode and you can't take your eyes off him. I think that's a good thing because I get the feeling he is building more slowly this pre-season and this allows others to step up whilst he does. If today was anything to go by I think we'll still see plenty of Sandi next season. Clunked a couple of nice ones inside 50 during match sims.
It was good to see all of our defenders looking fit and ready to go. There was a few body work drills involving Hamling v Duman, Pearce v Logue, Kersten v Ryan, Logue v Nyhuis, Wilson v Carter. So only Watson not involved as he was doing fitness work with Sturt and Valente instead. Ross was watching on and was pretty vocal/critical about them doing the drills as close to what it'd be like in game as possible. As others have said in recent weeks, Ross seems to be more involved at training than he was last pre-season. He has also certainly lost weight but think a picture posted by their media team a few weeks back was a bit misleading
Bewley has clearly walked right into the main group as if this isn't his first pre-season. Pretty safe bet he'll be well in the mix for Round 1. Schultz similarly doing a fair bit more with the main group than our 18yo draftees, although he did join them for fitness work later in the session, as did Carter. I didn't see enough of Blakely, Langdon, Cox, Dixon, Banfield, Brayshaw, Crowden, North, Giro and Jones to say anything substantial about any of them. As I said earlier though, they all look like they've done the right thing over the off-season. Brayshaw now has an inside mid body so can't wait to see how much that changes things for him.
As I mentioned a few weeks back we've got a new Senior Strength & Conditioning Coach as of last month. He's the guy directly under Jason Weber and the person directly responsible for injury prevention etc. He's got a PhD in the area of skill acquisition and development (for soccer) but for his honours he looked at the relationship between training load and injuries (for beach volleyball) - and that's where he's done most of his work at West Coast Fever, Perth Glory, Peel and Glenelg before coming to us. Following training the past few weeks (as well as having a look live today) I've definitely noticed a greater emphasis on managing load so I'm hoping this guy is bringing the necessary expertise so we can prepare well for round 1 but without our players all breaking down mid way through the season. Lack of availability has really killed us the past few seasons - I think turning that around could have even more impact than anything else we are currently doing at training.
tl;dr - if you don't want to read my long diatribe then get to training yourself and give us your own better training report
Carter vs Wilson is interesting. How did Carter go?Decided to check out training for the first time this pre-season. Wasn't expecting to see any great 'signs' for our next season but found it to be a pretty good session to attend. Lots of people watching and a really nice day for it.
Somewhat good news is we only appear to have a handful in rehab and none of them look as serious as we've had in past pre-seasons. Think Hogan was the only one I didn't spot - he may have made an appearance, I just didn't see him. If Bell hadn't spoken about Hilly I would've assumed he was just on a modified program to build up from - clearly something they need to fix but he was smashing out the laps. Mundy and Walters also on modified programs but I didn't see anything that caused major alarm bells - Walters had a fair bit of strapping but was moving fine. Darcy, Meek, Tucker and someone I didn't recognise under their hat (wasn't Shultz like I first thought - fairly certain it was Colyer now) also just doing running. BHill, Cerra and Conca also did some extra running during the match sims.
Bennell training with the main group, looking unhindered and right in amongst it in match sims is probably the most exciting thing today. He really is a wildcard for us if he can stay on the park. Crossing fingers we can see a transformed forward line with him, Hogan and Lobb all lining up together sometime early in the coming season. That is three pretty massive potential inclusions - particularly Lobb who is simply massive. Didn't notice Rory a lot today but he moves well for a big guy. Tabs looked beast like today and was just a dominant presence in the match sims. Still stuffs around too much with ball in hand down field (seems to always turn toward the boundary line, turning his back on the field) but the good money is still on him being in the team in Round 1. I'm a big fan of Switkowski and he's looking far more comfortable in the team now. Plays intuitively and has some serious wheels when he needs. Ballas on the other hand was woeful. I reckon you could have asked him to hit a barn 25m out today and he would have found a way to miss it. As others have said before Matera looks fitter this pre-season. And anyone thinking McCarthy hasn't trimmed down obviously hasn't seen him in the flesh. He's a long way from Michelangelo's David but heaps better than where he was.
It's probably the first time I have watched match sims at Cockburn where I haven't noticed Fyfe - mainly because he normally just goes into beast mode and you can't take your eyes off him. I think that's a good thing because I get the feeling he is building more slowly this pre-season and this allows others to step up whilst he does. If today was anything to go by I think we'll still see plenty of Sandi next season. Clunked a couple of nice ones inside 50 during match sims.
It was good to see all of our defenders looking fit and ready to go. There was a few body work drills involving Hamling v Duman, Pearce v Logue, Kersten v Ryan, Logue v Nyhuis, Wilson v Carter. So only Watson not involved as he was doing fitness work with Sturt and Valente instead. Ross was watching on and was pretty vocal/critical about them doing the drills as close to what it'd be like in game as possible. As others have said in recent weeks, Ross seems to be more involved at training than he was last pre-season. He has also certainly lost weight but think a picture posted by their media team a few weeks back was a bit misleading
Bewley has clearly walked right into the main group as if this isn't his first pre-season. Pretty safe bet he'll be well in the mix for Round 1. Schultz similarly doing a fair bit more with the main group than our 18yo draftees, although he did join them for fitness work later in the session, as did Carter. I didn't see enough of Blakely, Langdon, Cox, Dixon, Banfield, Brayshaw, Crowden, North, Giro and Jones to say anything substantial about any of them. As I said earlier though, they all look like they've done the right thing over the off-season. Brayshaw now has an inside mid body so can't wait to see how much that changes things for him.
As I mentioned a few weeks back we've got a new Senior Strength & Conditioning Coach as of last month. He's the guy directly under Jason Weber and the person directly responsible for injury prevention etc. He's got a PhD in the area of skill acquisition and development (for soccer) but for his honours he looked at the relationship between training load and injuries (for beach volleyball) - and that's where he's done most of his work at West Coast Fever, Perth Glory, Peel and Glenelg before coming to us. Following training the past few weeks (as well as having a look live today) I've definitely noticed a greater emphasis on managing load so I'm hoping this guy is bringing the necessary expertise so we can prepare well for round 1 but without our players all breaking down mid way through the season. Lack of availability has really killed us the past few seasons - I think turning that around could have even more impact than anything else we are currently doing at training.
tl;dr - if you don't want to read my long diatribe then get to training yourself and give us your own better training report
bouncing as in - ran 15m and had a bounce or like dribbling a basketball. Either way seems incredible really...
