Speed, strength or skills?

[benny's buddy]

What do we need to spend the most time in the pre-season on?

I think we concentrated on skills last year and seemed to make us worse.

We certainly need guys like McCarthy and Playfair to bulk up if they're going to play forward.

Any thoughts? What do we need most?

 

[MrCatMan]

Strength.

Look at the more influential teams around, they are about 5-10kg per person heavier.

That only helps you getting hold of the pill. Still need some silkiness to do something with it.

I suggest that we teach our forwards to lead. 2003 showed how one dimensional our fwd line was.

I would love to see Kent and McCarthy leading out (in different areas) with Steve Johnson running in behind for the third option.

MrCatMan

 

[Sammy D]

Umm...if we spent last pre-season on our skills it certainly didnt show!

I personally think we need improvement in all three areas. Speed is probably our best. But our skills and strength need big improvements. Teams like Brisbane tend to bully us around, with a few more years hopefully our young bodies will develop

 

[ScouseCat]

I thought we concentrated mainly on strength last pre-season following the Brisbane game in 2002 at Geelong. I think our pace is fine, our strength needs work but will come when our young players become seasoned footballers, however our skills are woeful and need a hell of a lot of improvement if we're to even think about making the finals.

 

[Turkey Tom]

As far as I'm concerned it has to be skills. We held our own in the strength and speed areas in most games, but our skills were probably the worst in the league.

 

[Sammy D]

Originally posted by ScouseCat
I thought we concentrated mainly on strength last pre-season following the Brisbane game in 2002 at Geelong.

I was under the same impression

 

[Banger35]

I would imagine that across the board skills work would be harder to see the benefits as a team. That being some players skills would improve and some would remain constant, I would imagine a big pre-season in the weights room is what Geelong could use.

Skills can only be improved marginally over a pre-season, but strength work can have an immediate impact on the entire team imo.

 

[jim boy]

At the stage that most players are at, skills should already be in place, although fine-tuning is sometimes required. You only had to look at Clarke to realise that some player's skills sets will never improve. Speed is also something that doesn't need to be addressed particular. There is a player's natural speed, this can be improved slightly by improved skills, but this isn't always in a player's favour if it makes them more supceptible to being tackled. Also things like forwards leading etc are in the realm of tactics and is something that the coaching department needs to work on more than any individual player.

Undoubtedly it's strength and endurance that needs to be worked on at this time of year, as these are both timely to get right. There are other things to be worked on as well, peripheral vision and reaction/judgement times. Too much last season, Geelong players took too long to spot options and too long to execute them.

 

[Falconer02]

I think Mcarthy needs to work on kicking bulk him up to much and he loses his number 1 asset athletiscism.

 

[benny's buddy]

Originally posted by ScouseCat
I thought we concentrated mainly on strength last pre-season following the Brisbane game in 2002 at Geelong.

i think after the disaster that was the western bulldogs game in round 1, thompson was asked about the skill errors and said he was really disappointed cos they'd really concerntrated on skill in the pre-season.

maybe i dreamt that up!!

 

[GeeCat]

Our speed is fine as far as I am concerned. (Think Wocjinski, D.Johnson, Byrnes, Ablett, Kelly, Spriggs)

We need to work on our Strength AND our Skills. We can't really focus on one more specifically as it would useless in the game plan without the other.

Our skill level will need to improve if we are to consistently get the ball and move it across the field. But our boy's strength in their bodies needs to be fair dinkum if their gonna be able to get the ball, hold it, and mark the ball.

Of course certain players will have to concentrate on certain areas:

Forwards: Strength
(Need to hold their ground and build up bodies. Especially our KPP like McCarthy, Playfair, Lonergan, Mackie, Haynes, Kingsley. Special attention to McCarthy for Skill [Kicking])

Midfielders: Skill
(Our kicking was consistently poor, as was our general disposal. Strength also needs to be built up, but I believe our young midfielders need to work on their skill before their strength. Strength can be taught as they go along, with many of their bodies still to mature. They do weights every year anyhow. HOWEVER, skills can be learnt only at a certain stage. I believe we need to get our youngsters to learn the basics and learn to keep it that way. If we teach them certain things now, they will progress with it as if they've had it all their life. They can't really learn as well when at a later age. )

Defense: Strength
(Our defense is reasonably seasoned, and I thought they were pretty good this season. They will continue to work on their strength no doubt, as they seek to build up a strong, inpenatrable backline, much like Brisbane's. If you look at the Lion's, blokes like the Scott's, Michael, Lepptisch, C.Johnson, Pike, and even Daniel Bradshaw are all suprememly strong and are one of the toughest defenses in the leauge. I feel we can achieve the same in the future with Scarlett, Harley, Rooke, Milburn, Hunt and youngsters such as Slade, Callan, Playfair, Wojcinski.)