In fact the Age on Sunday the 13th November 2005 continued their good coverage of Hawthorn. Gotta feeling they like us
2 articles by Samantha Lane.
The first concerned John Barker
Hawthorn forward John Barker's quest to play on in 2006 is progressing smoothly, with the 30-year-old continuing his conditioning program before the final decision on his career is made next month.
While key forward Nick Holland was released at season's end, the Hawks have invested considerable time in Barker, who has played only 24 games in the past three years.
It is understood Barker completed one of his best sequences of training days last week, but until his body is put under serious tests his playing future is uncertain.
He was Hawthorn's leading goalkicker when the club last reached the finals, in 2001, and was equal third in the club's best and fairest that year. Since then, Barker has battled osteitis pubis and various soft-tissue injuries.
"At the moment I think he's on track, but the real test is in the next four or five weeks. He's been doing a real preparation block of training so that we can then really test him out in December," Hawthorn's head of fitness Andrew Russell said.
"Structurally his body is in good shape right now - his ankles, his knees, his hips, his shoulders, all his joints are in good shape. So the challenge is for his body to be able to do high intensity sessions and be able to recover without having a soft-tissue breakdown."
Barker, who is out of contract, committed to on-going training, some under Russell's guidance, while his teammates were on holidays.
Barker is determined to play on, provided his body allows, and would have wholehearted support from his peers.
"When you have no direction or anything across centre half-forward, it's pretty hard to get deep into your forward line. So he's that important to us," said Ben Dixon, who acted as general of the Hawks' young forward line this year.
The second article talks about Hawthorns new preseason training program, titled "Hawks Board Tech Train"
"I REMEMBER we went to the Cerberus army camp. That was my first pre-season," Hawthorn forward Ben Dixon recalled last week after completing the first month of his 12th campaign.
"We had this gruelling mud run, where you're seriously up to your waist in mud and trying to get through that and carry logs and all that sort of thing.
"I was built like a twig and I had a tent with Dermott (Brereton) and Darren Jarman and Simon Minton-Connell, those sort of blokes, so it was pretty intimidating to a 17-year-old kid.
"That would probably be a novelty camp now. I couldn't see it being your focus for a pre-season like they used to be . . . but back then it was probably a Monday to Friday thing where you'd come to training just to be flogged."
Devoting a summer to making the grade demands no less exertion now than it did in 1994, when Dixon was drafted. But certainly at Hawthorn - if not at every AFL side - groups of more sensitive new-age trainers are being bred.
The odd pre-dawn run up a mountain or attack of an obstacle course still seems to provide players with a sense of mateship, but Hawthorn's head fitness coach Andrew Russell says that nowadays nothing in a training program is done simply for the hell of it.
Russell began working with John Quinn at Essendon in 1998 and, in some summer sessions, oversaw players running with bricks raised above their heads until the point of exhaustion. Those who dropped the weights were considered "soft" or "pathetic".
Every AFL club had its version of training torture. But as sport science has evolved, so have attitudes to such extreme physical challenges.
"The players aren't perceived by the coaching group (now) as being soft just for saying 'I'm a bit tired, I'm a bit sore, I'm a bit flat'. In the past it was perceived as . . . a cross against their name," said Russell.
"I think the players back then tended to hide their injuries a little bit and tended to push through when they were sore.
"Some people would say that maybe we've gone soft on the athlete in that they report everything . . . but I think we have to aim to educate the athlete to the point where they are able to make the decision themselves.
"They should be able to tell me when they're sore and when it's dangerous soreness, and when they're sore and it's just a training adaptation.
"We'll still run the guys into the ground. We'll absolutely smash our players at certain stages, but then we'll let them recover . . . so that they can go again."
Dixon, now 28, has had to learn not to feel guilty in the times he's been unable to train fully. "I think the old mentality was if you're not training then you're dogging it, and that's a hard mentality to get out of," he said.
"It was like, 'If he's not training, he's weak as ********'. But that's not the case. It's (now considered that) he's being smart with his body, he's going to prolong his career."
Like Collingwood last year, Hawthorn began its 2006 pre-season campaign early. It required 75 per cent support from the player body (only two or three players opposed the movement), and gave fitness staff precious bonus days to work with. The way the training program was structured subsequently has allowed the group to take this week off.
Hawthorn's training focus is on what Russell terms "game conditioning". From the outset, the squad has combined skills and running work, rather than tackle the disciplines in separate sessions.
"We're doing quite a lot more skill work than when I was at Port Adelaide," said Russell, who followed Hawks coach Alastair Clarkson from Alberton to Glenferrie.
"But Port Adelaide were a very highly skilled side. So we could put a whole lot of conditioning work into them and really work on their condition and their fitness knowing that the natural skill level of the group was very high."
Hawthorn's squad is less advanced - in the club's last match this year there were nine first-year players. However, top 2004 draft picks Jarryd Roughead, Lance Franklin and Jordan Lewis defied the popular theory - that first-year players can only last so long in the seniors before requiring a spell in the reserves - by playing a combined total of 55 matches.
Over 22 weeks there is no substitute for a battle-hardened body though, and that had implications for Hawthorn, which finished 14th.
"There were certain stats that suggested that we needed to improve our skill execution in a fatigued state because we were quite good when we were fresh," Russell said. "That's for many reasons. The training age of the group is probably the No. 1 reason and the amount of young players we had playing."
But Russell says it's no more complicated managing Hawthorn's squad than the Port Adelaide list he helped prepare in its premiership year. When they are not doing group skills work, players are generally divided into groups according to their "training age" - a ranking determined by the number of pre-seasons the player has done.
The fact that about 85 per cent of the list is in full training has Russell surmising that the Hawks "are in a very, very strong position right now".
Of the regular senior players, midfielder Sam Mitchell (shoulder), Rick Ladson (arm) and Nick Ries (ankle) are still on modified programs. Chance Bateman, Mark Williams, Tim Boyle and Robert Campbell have all resumed full training after recovering from various ailments.
The club's big-name "one-year-olds" Roughead, Franklin and Lewis are all progressing well. "All of our young guys came in with quite high skinfolds last year and they've all dropped off quite considerably," Russell said.
Naturally strong-bodied midfielder Lewis is the most obvious example. He has shed five kilograms of body fat since arriving at the club. Roughead has also dropped about the same amount but weighs 10 kilograms more than he did this time last year.
And if players' choice of casual dress is any indication of their confidence levels, then Franklin fans should be enthused. The teenager they call "Buddy" was getting around a sun-drenched Glenferrie Oval last Wednesday afternoon in a figure gripping singlet.
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If the Age keeps this up, ill have to consider buying the real thing instead of just reading from the internet.