Wed May 31 training

[Philzsay]

Just back from catching most of training today so thought I would give a mini report on my impressions.

Missing in action: Laycock, Ryder, Rioli, Cole (did 10 minutes of warm up before heading off track).
Lucas only completed about half of the session.
Hird practised his handballs with Rama before completing several half laps down one side of Windy Hill. He was running at about 75% pace but looked fine. (should note that I am not a doctor though!)
Happy to report Campo participated in all of the session and looked over his injury. Should be back in the next week or two.
JJ and Mcphee also completed all of the session without any obvious discomfort.

Also, I almost jumped for joy when I saw that there were two number 6's on the ground. However it was short lived when i quickly realised that the other number 6 was just Justin Blumfield and that we hadn't actually cloned another Gus...

Overall the training session was pretty good. Started with all the agilty warms up stuff, like running around the green poles, dancing around objects on the ground. Moved onto the drill where they are in four corners of the ground and they kick the ball to players on the lead etc...
Most of the training session was actually simulated match practice. They looked fine, not 100% sharp but not too bad. The players spirits seemd to be up. When I went to training after the Carlton game I had noticed everyone was really loud like as if they had to prove something. Today they were loud as well but seemed more calm.
Half of the players also practiced their smothers which I haven't seen at training before.
G.O'D took seemed to be the one in charge today with Sheedy barking a few odd oders at players from the side. Gary Ayers worked a fair bit with both the defenders and forwards during the simulated practice, good to him passing on all his knowledge.

Later on was great to see Matt Lloyd out on the ground and he was giving goal kicking advice to Hocking, Johns and Reynolds.

Anyway overall was a fairly good session.

 

[red+black]

Not according to one report on SEN from a guy who was training in the gym.

 

[Philzsay]

Well I train at the same gym. The view in the gym is not as good as if you sit in the stand or around the boundry fence.

I have seen about 6 or 7 training sessions this year and I have seen us train worse. Anyway we are all entitled to our opinion.

 

[red+black]

So, sounds like we will win on Friday then? Promising signs it seems.

 

[keepzitreal]

Most of the training session was actually simulated match practice.

Could u elaborate on this a bit more. I coach a U16 team, sitting at 5 and 2 and 4th on the ladder. With the 2 games we have lost players just werent prepared to run or get numbers to the ball, especially the midfield. Could u explain how this drill worked?

Cheers

 

[Philzsay]

So, sounds like we will win on Friday then? Promising signs it seems.

lol. Highly unlikely. I said a good training session, not a brilliant one! But I do expect us to put in a better effort than what we did against Port.

 

[red+black]

lol. Highly unlikely. I said a good training session, not a brilliant one! But I do expect us to put in a better effort than what we did against Port.

So we'll lose by under 10 goals? Or just appear to look better and lose by more than 10 goals?

 

[Philzsay]

Could u elaborate on this a bit more. I coach a U16 team, sitting at 5 and 2 and 4th on the ladder. With the 2 games we have lost players just werent prepared to run or get numbers to the ball, especially the midfield. Could u explain how this drill worked?

Cheers

It was a fairly simple drill, actually I would call it more like a light heatred practice match as opposed to a drill. The players were divided into two teams, green and black tops. Every player was on another similar sized player. eg MJ was on Gus, Lee on Johns etc. There would be about 5 players from each team at both ends and a bunch in the middle. One of the coaches would then kick the ball to a backman and the ball would be in play. Obviously the backman would kick or handpass to someone else and so on until a goal was scored for either team. So if you kicked it poorly and gave the ball up to the opposition they could quickly rebound to score etc.
So essentially it was like match practice, except that they wouldn't tackle as hard as they would in a real game. And if some took a mark, he could choose to go back and take his kick, so everyone else would lead etc or he could play on etc...
They would do this a couple of times and then the coachs would call them in into their seperate teams and give them new instructions. So the next time they might try a different tactic.
The other thing is that Sheeds, G.O'D, Ayres, Wallis, Barnes, Dimma et al were all over the oval offering advice during the breaks. For example I was watching Ayers closely and after one play he told Lee that he should have positioned himself in a certain area of the ground, and at the same time told Slatts he should have moved into another area to fill in the hole.
Hope that helped!

 

[Philzsay]

So we'll lose by under 10 goals? Or just appear to look better and lose by more than 10 goals?

Since you want me to take a guess, I'd say that in the first 3 quarters we will play similar to how we played against West Coast (which was only a week ago) and only be down at 3/4 time by around 15 points. Then we will get blown away in the last quarter and lose by 53pts.