- Joined
- Jun 13, 2005
- Posts
- 32,595
- Reaction score
- 18,936
- Location
- Adelaide
- AFL Club
- Adelaide
- Other Teams
- Norwood, Red Wings
Footy is back! Sort of…
Great to see the lads back out there in what was a very warm morning for training. Hard to take it all in at the first training session of the ‘new’ season as it as seemed to go rather quickly and you’re trying to notice everyone. And seriously, it was hot.
I’ll start off by mentioning the players in the restricted/light duty group; they weren’t out there for too long, just doing a few handball drills. This group consisted of van Berlo, Thompson, Rutten, Martin and Ricky Henderson. While everyone else in this group left the session real early Henderson did many laps around Max Basheer Reserve. He has bulked up a fair bit and looks in terrific shape. I guess he’s still recovering from the hip (?) injury that hampered him in the latter stages of the season.
Jared Petrenko looks like a tank. Everyone has been saying that he needed to add bulk to his frame whereas I’ve always felt that his physique was already really good. However you can see noticeable improvement in his body shape, arms and legs look a lot stronger. Same goes with Jarrhan Jacky who looks a lot more hardened.
Phil Davis still has strapping on his shoulders, hard to tell whether he’s bulked up but initial thoughts were not at all. In the drill where it was mostly 1-on-1’s all over the ground and shirts vs non shirts, there were some interesting positional moves. Andy Otten played in defence, the absolute gun Chris Knights was a forward, James Sellar was a defender. Will Young, who I’ll touch on later, was opposed to Taylor Walker and looked real good. It was Knights v Johncock and Young v Walker and they came together and had a little bit of a shove.
Young is really competitive and will become a favourite. In this game as soon as the other team laid two hands on the opposition, or gained possession, it was a turnover.
They also had about 5 minutes worth of repeated 100m sprints. Dangerfield out in front a few times with his powerful, upright stride. They would get to the other end, take a few seconds and start again. To be expected, players were exhausted following this and then went and put on ice-vests. Another player stayed back and did a couple more before taking off, it might have been Petrenko but then again I thought I saw him later. I’ll be getting Petrenko and Jacky confused a lot.
There was another drill with little packs spread out across the oval with just a basic kick to the leading player. Maric kicked one shocker and let out an expletive, Young had a shocker and yelled out and Knights the perfectionist (he is perfect though...) had one too and a big ‘ohh nooo’ came. Myke Cook looked super, really good. Every time I see him he’s so impressive in tight situations, his agility helps him get out of packs. He looks a lot like Mackay! Kicking skills were good, but last PS they looked good too, he’s fine without any pressure. Love the look of him though, will be a star.
McKernan has an arm guard protecting his twice broken arm and it still limits what he can do. However he still looked great, some beautiful marks, one in which he leaped a mile and somehow is stuck with one hand. It’s those massive hands! He seems a lot more comfortable now, looked more involved. Michael Doughty, did he break a hand or something? I think he had gloves on both hands so that affected him. Tony Armstrong was doing a bit of work with one assistant coach focusing on picking the ball cleanly up off the deck, with mixed results. Don’t think he’s bulked up at all either, probably one of those players who just can’t. Dangerfield looks pretty well defined, certainly a lot stronger.
Three players who stood out to me as giving it everything, Maric, Symes and Mackay. Maric worked incredibly hard and you can see he wants to be the best he can, ditto with Symes. Mackay is ridiculously smooth in everything he does and seems to always stand out.
At the end of the session, two things stood out. Will Young stayed back quite a while working on his kicking with Peter Jonas and later another coach. He worked on it a fair bit and it seemed like they mostly worked on his ball drop. He had 3 horrendous kicks during the drills so obviously he’s still got a ways to go. He was dropping the ball on the ground, picking it up and then kicking it to Jonas who was about 30 metres away. This is the biggest weakness in his game, short kicking. It’ll be really costly in the AFL so he’s got to keep at it. I’d expect to see this a fair bit over the summer. Taylor Walker was the other player to receive additional help; he worked with a coach to focus on his chasing. They did this for a little while. Schmidt was working on kicking with his left as he had some kick to kick with Mackay. Schmidt looks pretty big too. One last thing, there seemed like about a million assistant coaches out there today.
I’ve hopefully got some pics coming and any questions I’ll give my best shot.
Great to see the lads back out there in what was a very warm morning for training. Hard to take it all in at the first training session of the ‘new’ season as it as seemed to go rather quickly and you’re trying to notice everyone. And seriously, it was hot.
I’ll start off by mentioning the players in the restricted/light duty group; they weren’t out there for too long, just doing a few handball drills. This group consisted of van Berlo, Thompson, Rutten, Martin and Ricky Henderson. While everyone else in this group left the session real early Henderson did many laps around Max Basheer Reserve. He has bulked up a fair bit and looks in terrific shape. I guess he’s still recovering from the hip (?) injury that hampered him in the latter stages of the season.
Jared Petrenko looks like a tank. Everyone has been saying that he needed to add bulk to his frame whereas I’ve always felt that his physique was already really good. However you can see noticeable improvement in his body shape, arms and legs look a lot stronger. Same goes with Jarrhan Jacky who looks a lot more hardened.
Phil Davis still has strapping on his shoulders, hard to tell whether he’s bulked up but initial thoughts were not at all. In the drill where it was mostly 1-on-1’s all over the ground and shirts vs non shirts, there were some interesting positional moves. Andy Otten played in defence, the absolute gun Chris Knights was a forward, James Sellar was a defender. Will Young, who I’ll touch on later, was opposed to Taylor Walker and looked real good. It was Knights v Johncock and Young v Walker and they came together and had a little bit of a shove.
Young is really competitive and will become a favourite. In this game as soon as the other team laid two hands on the opposition, or gained possession, it was a turnover. They also had about 5 minutes worth of repeated 100m sprints. Dangerfield out in front a few times with his powerful, upright stride. They would get to the other end, take a few seconds and start again. To be expected, players were exhausted following this and then went and put on ice-vests. Another player stayed back and did a couple more before taking off, it might have been Petrenko but then again I thought I saw him later. I’ll be getting Petrenko and Jacky confused a lot.
There was another drill with little packs spread out across the oval with just a basic kick to the leading player. Maric kicked one shocker and let out an expletive, Young had a shocker and yelled out and Knights the perfectionist (he is perfect though...) had one too and a big ‘ohh nooo’ came. Myke Cook looked super, really good. Every time I see him he’s so impressive in tight situations, his agility helps him get out of packs. He looks a lot like Mackay! Kicking skills were good, but last PS they looked good too, he’s fine without any pressure. Love the look of him though, will be a star.
McKernan has an arm guard protecting his twice broken arm and it still limits what he can do. However he still looked great, some beautiful marks, one in which he leaped a mile and somehow is stuck with one hand. It’s those massive hands! He seems a lot more comfortable now, looked more involved. Michael Doughty, did he break a hand or something? I think he had gloves on both hands so that affected him. Tony Armstrong was doing a bit of work with one assistant coach focusing on picking the ball cleanly up off the deck, with mixed results. Don’t think he’s bulked up at all either, probably one of those players who just can’t. Dangerfield looks pretty well defined, certainly a lot stronger.
Three players who stood out to me as giving it everything, Maric, Symes and Mackay. Maric worked incredibly hard and you can see he wants to be the best he can, ditto with Symes. Mackay is ridiculously smooth in everything he does and seems to always stand out.
At the end of the session, two things stood out. Will Young stayed back quite a while working on his kicking with Peter Jonas and later another coach. He worked on it a fair bit and it seemed like they mostly worked on his ball drop. He had 3 horrendous kicks during the drills so obviously he’s still got a ways to go. He was dropping the ball on the ground, picking it up and then kicking it to Jonas who was about 30 metres away. This is the biggest weakness in his game, short kicking. It’ll be really costly in the AFL so he’s got to keep at it. I’d expect to see this a fair bit over the summer. Taylor Walker was the other player to receive additional help; he worked with a coach to focus on his chasing. They did this for a little while. Schmidt was working on kicking with his left as he had some kick to kick with Mackay. Schmidt looks pretty big too. One last thing, there seemed like about a million assistant coaches out there today.
I’ve hopefully got some pics coming and any questions I’ll give my best shot.
Dougy
