Training Report - 14/11/08

By jackie mihocek
Training Fri. 14/11/08 in wet conditions at La Trobe Uni

The players looked sharper today and the vibes were good as players moved with enthusiasm at an increased tempo. It was suggested that this might be because the younger players are fighting for spots dragging along the older players who need to defend their turf.

Pears moved well today and was attracting the attention of one club official who seems enthusiastic about his progress while also keeping an eye on Hislop who trained steadily.

Merv Keane is relaxed and upbeat about the forthcoming draft. I made the mistake of asking him what was the hardest part of his job and he said “Picking really good footballers.” Good to see a sense of humour around the club.

I have now seen three training sessions without anyone getting injured which is heartening. The suggestion was that soft tissue problems might in part be due to young players having too much football when they come to the club – perhaps as many as 40 games a year with school, TAC etc. with other stuff like basketball on top. I am sure some of you will have ideas about this.

Mathew Knights made an interesting comment about how well they were training. He seemed very happy with his new staff and said that last year a lot of time was spent learning the terminology and the new drills wheras this year less time can be spent on teaching this providing more scope to concentrate on strategic issues. Incidently he seems quietly pleased with Gumby’s progress and pointed to his speed in particular.

Last Monday I described a drill involving guarding the mark and how it had improved from the previous year. Today I was interested to see that some players did even better by making body contact with the kicker/handballer after he disposed of the ball to block him running downfield. This should be an automatic thing like backing up in cricket and I would hope that the coaching staff made all players get used to doing it.

Last time I also spoke about the increasing professionalism and I will mention it again today. All players now have heart monitors so that their training performance can be measured and evaluated for each drill after training finishes. I guess the days of bludging players are fast disappearing. Probably players would be expected to be performing at about 75% capacity most of the time with increased bursts of up to 100% for certain parts of training.

Tiffany was giving me a hand today but unfortunately her tight, white lacy blouse got a bit wet with the rain and because there was nothing underneath (Tiffany being a very fit and healthy type of girl) the heart rate monitors of players running near the boundary were being affected. In fact more and more players seemed to be moving towards the boundary all the time. However before I sent her to sit in the car she pointed out an unusual skill of our international Irish recruit. On two occassions when the ball was on the ground in front of him instead of bending to pick it up he simply flicked it upo into his hands with his foot. Pretty tricky to master I would think.

(I have been asked not to comment on player’s injuries as this may help other clubs – thus there is nothing about this in my report.)

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Posted 14 November 08 in News Training Report