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Full-back Daniel Merrett was not surprisingly the early bolter, leading by 2.5 votes from Jed Adcock after 10 Rounds before suffering a fractured vertebrae in Round 11.
Merrett was the only Lions player to score 3.5 votes or more three times.
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It took Gibson 10+ rounds to catch up on him.
You guys will do so much better with him back in the side next year. What are 'stress fractures', anyways? Not likely to re-occur, are they?
If the recovery is not treated properly they are very likely to re-occur.It took Gibson 10+ rounds to catch up on him.
You guys will do so much better with him back in the side next year. What are 'stress fractures', anyways? Not likely to re-occur, are they?
It’s the bookends, isn’t it? We lost Browny and we lost Daniel Merrett. They’re the first two you pick in the side. He’s got speed and was winning the B&F up to round 14 I think. He was having a great season and that stress fracture in his back has now healed, so he’ll do a full pre-season and we can’t wait for him to come back.
"Last year I set a benchmark for myself and I didn't feel like I was doing anything that special," Merrett said at Noosa's Main Beach yesterday during Brisbane's week-long Sunshine Coast training camp.
"I felt I was at the standard that I should be playing at but you can always get better and I'm looking at improving my decision-making, improving my fitness and improving my skills.
"You can never stop pushing yourself or testing yourself. You have to keep raising that bar."
Merrett will head to Arizona next week with the rest of the Lions' leadership group and said there were no lingering issues with the back injury.
"It feels good, it feels strong. I haven't had any dramas at all," he said.
Despite being afforded a rare day off from pre-season training, Lions defensive duo Daniel Merrett and Matt Maguire spent the early hours of Wednesday morning visiting Club Media Partners Zinc 96.1FM in Noosa.
Merrett, in particular, is a long-time friend of the Sunshine Coast radio network, and regularly joins Nugget and Al as a guest on ‘The Morning Zoo’ program.
The radio hosts even went to the lengths of creating a new nickname for the Lions full-back a couple of years ago, affectionately labelling him ‘The Rusty Fist’ in acknowledgement of his fiery red hair and supreme spoiling ability.
Q2: What is your team-mates most treasured body part?
Maguire: It’s probably his tattooed swallow pectorals. They are a treat. He’s always getting them out. He even did a presser out on the beach yesterday just to make sure they got in camera.
“The sessions have been incredibly hard and gruelling,” Merrett said.
“There have been some periods when I thought I should just pack it all up and head back home, but it has just been so rewarding and to share it with some of my team-mates is unbelievable.”
“The first week was absolutely amazing. The experiences we had climbing Mt Humphrey and mountain biking in Sedona are probably two of the most unbelievable days of my life.”
“I feel so thankful to have been given the opportunity to come here to Arizona to improve my fitness - which is one of my goals this pre-season.”
“So far we’ve had some really tough sessions and our fitness base is constantly improving. We had a really hard running session yesterday which I rated a 9.5/10,” he said.
Did you notice anybody not adjusting to the flight very well?
Everyone was pretty similar. Who did adjust really well was Daniel Merrett. Everytime I looked over to him he looked like a corpse. He had his headphones on and his eye mask on. He was happy as Larry, he was.
Merrett is 196cm, 104kg, about to turn 27, has 113 games under his belt - most as a full-back - and is changing his game now more than ever.
"You think as the bookends it's all about power and speed but you just need to get up and down the ground so much," Merrett said.
"If I go to a school clinic I tell the kids just to run, become a marathon runner and you'll be right. You have to be able to cover the ground these days.
"That's why the game is becoming so professional and that's what makes our sport so special, you can't just specialise in one area, you've got to be strong, you've got to be fit, you've got to be quick, and you've got to be able to take contact."
Merrett describes himself as a "shocking" distance runner, but one who was a continual work in progress.
He said it was an element of his make-up that would never come at the expense of his greatest assets - power and speed off the mark.
photo courtesy of Jorgo
@JamesSeidel - What's the best advice you have for a young fullback?
I think the best advice is to play off the back shoulder of your opponent, so you can see the play up ahead and you know where your opponent is at all times. If you want to be really adventurous you can play in front with the arm across him, but I find that's quite hard because you've got to keep one eye on the play and one eye on your opponent.
@Emmmm01 - What's your favourite ranga nickname?
To start off I'm not a big rap on the ranga call. The organgutan is a beautiful creature and actually an endangered species, so the more we get that out there that I'm not a big rap on it the better. Favourite nickname? I've got a few. 'Strawb' because I actually used to peroxide my hair through highschool. Actually I had black hair at one stage going through highschool. That was a bit of a gothic stage.
@jpfoord - What extra work have you done to #ATTC?
I was lucky enough to go to Arizona with the boys this year. A bit of mountain hiking, a bit of mountain biking. I've actually been doing a lot of the running program, the same as the midfielders, this year. So I feel I've got a lot more run in the legs and a bit more spring in the step.
