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Went down to training for a look today. Pretty windy, so some of the skills were a bit scrappy, especially those with suspect foot skills (Fitzpatrick, and disappointingly Gysberts, were probably the worst).
A standout to me was Blease. He's obviously not the fittest out there, but he really attacked training today with huge enthusiasm. More importantly, his kicking is so silky - a nice low trajectory, ball spin 100% correct every time, great penetration. He really stood out in difficult conditions. Fingers crossed he can get his endurance up and stay fit. On a side note, he trained with the forwards when the groups split into forwards-backs-midfielders.
The boys did a time trial early before heading into group work. The most part was spent really concentrating on breaking through a press, which was done with varying success. Still, great to see the boys working on something that we really struggled with last season. Jamie Bennell was also eye-catching here working the ball through from the backline with good evasiveness, vision and delivery. Hopefully he can be that rebounding small defender we need.
Other random notes from today:
- Garland was training with the mids. Looks really fit.
- Sellar was really throwing himself into everything. Can't doubt his commitment. Training with the backs.
- Bail was absolutely flying during the running drills. He looks like an elite middle distance runner.
- Sylvia did solo laps for nearly all of the session at about half pace. Must've run about 20 laps before heading away.
- Cook and Tapscott just walked laps. Petterd was also jogging slow laps.
- Didn't see Jurrah or Jamar
- A couple of unknown faces looked quite handy, a tall well-built blond fella, and a smaller, speedy aboriginal bloke. No idea who they were unfortunately but both looked to have good attributes.
Then Mitch Clark was handed the No.11 jumper by Jimmy. He looked very humbled.
That's all I can remember.
I was there too, as The Dr says it was very windy. This put a severe dampener on the skill level for the session, which was fairly disappointing from what I saw.
Blease was training hard because he was copping it from the coaches. Brian Royal was on his back regarding the repeat sprints (fitness terrible at this point, to be expected I guess but it's really not up to standard yet). He also copped it from Watts at one stage about a lack of talk, good form by Jack I thought.
Can't comment much on the new blokes as I didn't really know any of them by face. Sellar was right into it, which was good to see. High intensity.
The 'Press' drill was frustrating tbh. White vs. Blue, they took turns pressing and getting through it with generally average results. There were a lot of turnovers from those on the last line of the blue team - Garland, Rivers, Morton - based on lack of options up field. It was 2011 all over again. Not to single those guys out, but that was where I was standing. Suffice it to say that getting through the press needs a lot of work.
More to come as I think of it, I'm in a hurry atm.