Training 2021/22 Preseason Thread Lessssf*ngo

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Kangaroos techno

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Feb 4, 2021
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Matt Mcguiness has had his shorts ripped completely off and is currently training in his jocks. Good advert for Puma shorts 😂
Jesus. Thanks for letting me know because i almost got a pair last night. Be a bit embarrassing if i exploded out of them while bending down to pick up an item at woolies.
 

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Sphynx

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Ok some thoughts from todays session (my 4th session so far this preseason):

As mentioned, it was wet, but no excuse for the general skill level on show. We are still an extremely young group and I think anyone thinking we are climbing out of the bottom 5 is being a bit optimistic. I think we will be in and around the bottom 4 again for sure.

To paint the picture, there was an end to end drill where you had to transition it to the full forward. It wasn't a "the ball hits the ground and it's a turnover" type drill either. Basic contact work and play on when the ball was missqued. It was pseudo match practice. I don't think the ball hit either of the teams full-forward at either end for about 6-7 minutes as the ball just kept getting turned over every 2nd possession through the arcs. When Tarryn finally hit the full forward lace out he dropped the chest mark :drunk:

I'll keep the comments on a few players limited, all the missing players are those mentioned by others in the last few days. Spicer and Walker were in the rehab group for most of the session and WiPhi was doing running for 90% of the session (recovering from Covid as I mentioned a few posts above).

Spicer and Chom - are both about 5-10kgs heavier respectively. Spicer looks to have improved his skill level slightly. Mahoney will be looking in the mirror, as Spicer is going to be all over his spot this year. Chom was dropping a few marks in the wet, but has had a huge body change considering he was off the weights for most of last year with stress fractures.

Perez - This years training the house down winner I think. Absolutely flying. Big, quick over the ground and his skills stood above almost all others besides Thomas. Sat Hayden on his ass twice in the end to end sim work. A few players tried to run through his tackles and just got buried. He's just a big unit and one of our prized colts. Looked to be flying over the ground and no sign of the knee causing any issues with his athleticism.

Greenwood - Actually didn't notice him at all until the simulation stuff when I heard his name. Was quite involved in that period and his kicking was actually quite good in the conditions.

Goater - Less involved than a few other sessions, but still prominent. I'm convinced this kid is in the Powell/Phillips class. He's also clearly suffered from the Powell pre-draft kicking PR campaign, it's nowhere near as bad as what was advertised. I'd also probably say he should be classified as a "good kick" As he hit a number of excellent 25m inboard kicks out of defence in the simulation stuff. As mentioned, he just explodes off the turf, he looks like Fyfe when he flies for a mark in that it looks like he's launched off a trampoline. Was also very clean where 90% of the playing group were fumbling or two grabbing. Majak is the only player in recent memory from North as athletically gifted as this guy, not even guys like McKernan, Choppy, Winny, Wood, Aaron Black etc were in this guys class. He has genuine Kouta/Fyfe sort of athleticism. At one point he presented as an outlet from defence. Lazzaro was marking him on his shoulder (who is certainly not slow), Goater put about 10m on him in the space of 30m and took the hitup. Just blew by him like he was Cunners... For future track watchers, he always wears a visor in training, Bergman looks quite similar from a distance (who always wears a hat in training), it's how you can tell the difference. You can certainly see the difference when they start moving, however...

Cooper Harvey - I watched him pretty closely for well over an hour. He's actually got a pretty well developed body shape already. He almost looks a little bit like a young Kieran Harper out there. The first half of the session was pretty ordinary, missed a number of kicks in the circle work warm ups. Was two grabbing ground balls and marks. In the end to end sim though he got a number of touches, which bodes well for his footy IQ. Hit a number of good kicks in that sim and looked considerably better. Now for the cons: He's certainly on the smaller side (Lazzaro/Phillips sort of size) and he definitely lacks a yard of pace IMO for his size. When you were watching similar types who we have picked up in the third rounds recently (Curtis/Lazzaro/Spicer) they all look a level above him IMO. They are all stronger in the air, all a bit cleaner at ground level and all more consistent with their ball use. They all look to be superior athletes in terms of speed and power. That should give a bit of an indication of where he fits. He has to be a 40+ pick IMO unless he just unloads on the Nab League in game situations.

McGuiness - First of the 4 sessions where he's impressed me. He's certainly got some height now, he's taller than Josh Walker and was front and center in a lot of contested drills, so lets see how he takes to a few games as a CHB at VFL level and possibly even the pre-season games.

LDU - He's gotten 5% bigger, but I doubt we see him explode into an AA calibre midfielder. He quite possibly might just not be the endurance animal type, but he's always on his haunches, always just cruising around, even after the first couple of drills of the sessions he looked slightly gassed. It's probably his major areas of improvement, but I haven't seen too much improvement in that regard. I think we can expect much of the same from LDU next year 22-24 touches a game and "almost there".

Corr - Looked to be training freely and is especially well-liked with even a lot of the younger guys.

Zurhaar - Looks bigger, looks fitter and looked to be training with a different intensity than I've ever seen him. I think the second half of the year really clicked with him. Looks like he wants to become an elite player of the comp IMO. Excited if he can build off that second half of the season which looking like he's capable of.

Thomas - As I said in a previous post. I don't think he fumbled or missed a target for the entire session when bad skills were everywhere. Even Simpkin and LDU were two grabbing and missing kicks at times, Thomas was completely immaculate. He's just another level.
 
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Would love to see Goater feature in the first couple of rounds. I reckon he's gonna be a ripper
Lack of a tank would hurt his chances. Is going to take a little while on that front.
 

Sphynx

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Good point, but would prefer him to build up in the vfl.

I agree, but I think that will be his spot, to begin with. He suits it a lot more than guys like Phillips or Laz who had been played there previously.

The fact he's also 6"3 means he can pinch-hit in basically every position besides the ruck and key positions in the event of an injury..
 

disco_cowboy

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Also attended training today but was only there for an hour.

Few takeaways I had:

I expect Simpkin & Thomas to be the main two mids starting paired with one of greenwood/powell/philips - they're a deadly one-two punch between them.

Zurhaar and Larkey are a genuinely formidable forward line duo. They will own the f50 at North for the next 10 years and with the young guys coming through (ford, curtis, taylor, mahoney, spicer) they seem like good role models to bring them on.

From today's session Ford and Perez should start round 1. Both looked good both with ball in hand and without.

Our team does look young, Greenwood stood out in our midfield mix as our only mature age body.

Pat Walker was training with the mids in a play switching exercise and I thought we looked alright.

They did a pretty decent session of murder ball. Ball doesn't stop for 5 minutes end to end. break, run it again. Did that about 3 or 4 times. Boys would have been spent after that.

Xerri looks good!
 

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Passmore

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Perez was the stand out again today imo. He was a focal point in the drills coming out of defence, not just a kid playing a secondary role. Interesting to see how that evolves when we have all hands on deck.

As mentioned in a earlier post, Thomas is head and shoulders above anyone else on the list right now. Pretty much nothing he can’t do in any part of the ground. Looking forward to seeing more of Jason teaming up with him in future sessions.
 

Psicosis

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Perez was the stand out again today imo. He was a focal point in the drills coming out of defence, not just a kid playing a secondary role. Interesting to see how that evolves when we have all hands on deck.

As mentioned in a earlier post, Thomas is head and shoulders above anyone else on the list right now. Pretty much nothing he can’t do in any part of the ground. Looking forward to seeing more of Jason teaming up with him in future sessions.

Excellent re Perez - For me, he was the clear stand out of our running defenders whilst watching training.

I mentioned prior to Xmas seeing a drill where TT & JHF were teamed up, in what was a keepings off style drill. They were unstoppable, did not lose once.
 

Passmore

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Excellent re Perez - For me, he was the clear stand out of our running defenders whilst watching training.

I mentioned prior to Xmas seeing a drill where TT & JHF were teamed up, in what was a keepings off style drill. They were unstoppable, did not lose once.

Spewing I missed that session.

Perez gave it to TT a few times today, and must say it got the blood flowing again.
 

7577969923

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Perez was the stand out again today imo. He was a focal point in the drills coming out of defence, not just a kid playing a secondary role. Interesting to see how that evolves when we have all hands on deck.

As mentioned in a earlier post, Thomas is head and shoulders above anyone else on the list right now. Pretty much nothing he can’t do in any part of the ground. Looking forward to seeing more of Jason teaming up with him in future sessions.

This talk of Perez is feeling like a huge bonus given he has almost been forgotten about with his injuries. In the brief glimpse we had, he looked great. Fingers crossed his body holds together and he can have a real crack at it.
 
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Ok some thoughts from todays session (my 4th session so far this preseason):

As mentioned, it was wet, but no excuse for the general skill level on show. We are still an extremely young group and I think anyone thinking we are climbing out of the bottom 5 is being a bit optimistic. I think we will be in and around the bottom 4 again for sure.

To paint the picture, there was an end to end drill where you had to transition it to the full forward. It wasn't a "the ball hits the ground and it's a turnover" type drill either. Basic contact work and play on when the ball was missqued. It was pseudo match practice. I don't think the ball hit either of the teams full-forward at either end for about 6-7 minutes as the ball just kept getting turned over every 2nd possession through the arcs. When Tarryn finally hit the full forward lace out he dropped the chest mark :drunk:

I'll keep the comments on a few players limited, all the missing players are those mentioned by others in the last few days. Spicer and Walker were in the rehab group for most of the session and WiPhi was doing running for 90% of the session (recovering from Covid as I mentioned a few posts above).

Spicer and Chom - are both about 5-10kgs heavier respectively. Spicer looks to have improved his skill level slightly. Mahoney will be looking in the mirror, as Spicer is going to be all over his spot this year. Chom was dropping a few marks in the wet, but has had a huge body change considering he was off the weights for most of last year with stress fractures.

Perez - This years training the house down winner I think. Absolutely flying. Big, quick over the ground and his skills stood above almost all others besides Thomas. Sat Hayden on his ass twice in the end to end sim work. A few players tried to run through his tackles and just got buried. He's just a big unit and one of our prized colts. Looked to be flying over the ground and no sign of the knee causing any issues with his athleticism.

Greenwood - Actually didn't notice him at all until the simulation stuff when I heard his name. Was quite involved in that period and his kicking was actually quite good in the conditions.

Goater - Less involved than a few other sessions, but still prominent. I'm convinced this kid is in the Powell/Phillips class. He's also clearly suffered from the Powell pre-draft kicking PR campaign, it's nowhere near as bad as what was advertised. I'd also probably say he should be classified as a "good kick" As he hit a number of excellent 25m inboard kicks out of defence in the simulation stuff. As mentioned, he just explodes off the turf, he looks like Fyfe when he flies for a mark in that it looks like he's launched off a trampoline. Was also very clean where 90% of the playing group were fumbling or two grabbing. Majak is the only player in recent memory from North as athletically gifted as this guy, not even guys like McKernan, Choppy, Winny, Wood, Aaron Black etc were in this guys class. He has genuine Kouta/Fyfe sort of athleticism. At one point he presented as an outlet from defence. Lazzaro was marking him on his shoulder (who is certainly not slow), Goater put about 10m on him in the space of 30m and took the hitup. Just blew by him like he was Cunners... For future track watchers, he always wears a visor in training, Bergman looks quite similar from a distance (who always wears a hat in training), it's how you can tell the difference. You can certainly see the difference when they start moving, however...

Cooper Harvey - I watched him pretty closely for well over an hour. He's actually got a pretty well developed body shape already. He almost looks a little bit like a young Kieran Harper out there. The first half of the session was pretty ordinary, missed a number of kicks in the circle work warm ups. Was two grabbing ground balls and marks. In the end to end sim though he got a number of touches, which bodes well for his footy IQ. Hit a number of good kicks in that sim and looked considerably better. Now for the cons: He's certainly on the smaller side (Lazzaro/Phillips sort of size) and he definitely lacks a yard of pace IMO for his size. When you were watching similar types who we have picked up in the third rounds recently (Curtis/Lazzaro/Spicer) they all look a level above him IMO. They are all stronger in the air, all a bit cleaner at ground level and all more consistent with their ball use. They all look to be superior athletes in terms of speed and power. That should give a bit of an indication of where he fits. He has to be a 40+ pick IMO unless he just unloads on the Nab League in game situations.

McGuiness - First of the 4 sessions where he's impressed me. He's certainly got some height now, he's taller than Josh Walker and was front and center in a lot of contested drills, so lets see how he takes to a few games as a CHB at VFL level and possibly even the pre-season games.

LDU - He's gotten 5% bigger, but I doubt we see him explode into an AA calibre midfielder. He quite possibly might just not be the endurance animal type, but he's always on his haunches, always just cruising around, even after the first couple of drills of the sessions he looked slightly gassed. It's probably his major areas of improvement, but I haven't seen too much improvement in that regard. I think we can expect much of the same from LDU next year 22-24 touches a game and "almost there".

Corr - Looked to be training freely and is especially well-liked with even a lot of the younger guys.

Zurhaar - Looks bigger, looks fitter and looked to be training with a different intensity than I've ever seen him. I think the second half of the year really clicked with him. Looks like he wants to become an elite player of the comp IMO. Excited if he can build off that second half of the season which looking like he's capable of.

Thomas - As I said in a previous post. I don't think he fumbled or missed a target for the entire session when bad skills were everywhere. Even Simpkin and LDU were two grabbing and missing kicks at times, Thomas was completely immaculate. He's just another level.

Re LDU, obviously you are bang on with his tank holding him back. But I wouldn’t read too much into this first part of 2022. Assuming he is recovering from covid and is in the same boat as WAP.
 
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Re LDU, obviously you are bang on with his tank holding him back. But I wouldn’t read too much into this first part of 2022. Assuming he is recovering from covid and is in the same boat as WAP.

I don’t feel LDU’s tank is any different to Cunners’ is.

Now he has the strength, he’ll fill that clearance void (albeit in a slightly different way).
 

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