Training Report - 21/11/08

By jackie mihocek
Training at La Trobe in cool conditions.

Stewart Crameri from Bendigo trained with the squad today and present watching training was a group of Scotch College football scholarship students including Dean Rioli’s brother. Knights and Keane spent some time talking to them at the begining of training.

The group again trained solidly today through a series of carefully prepared drills with players dropping in and out of various groups for individual or small group coaching as required. It is certainly very efficient and structured: “Now we will do handball drill number two – numbers – 4,5,7,19 etc. etc.”

One drill that did impress involved players in a large circle kicking two balls to each other while two players took it in turns to go in the middle and try and put pressure on the kickers who if confronted had to move back on the mark very quickly so they could go over or around the harassing player who of course could not go over the mark. Welsh’s efforts at harassing particularly stood out in this drill – he gave it everything.

Another drill involved moving the ball around the field quickly with 40 or fifty metre passes with players playing on quickly after taking the ball. This wasn’t so impressive today as a large number of kicks fell short – the recipient having to wait and collect it on the first bounce or some quite high kicks that left the players waiting under the ball. Seeing that the players kicking were not under pressure it was not impressive and is an area that must continue to be worked on.

If you have read the annual report you will have seen that one of the coach’s three objectives is improved communications between coaches and players. This was well emphasised in a hallf ground match type simulation (no tackling) where players had to find teamates with the ball under pressure. After the first run through the players and coaches were brought together in a group and Knights called for comments from the coaches and then refered to the videoing of the exercise which will later be discussed to see how it could be improved. This is real treaching and again supports the professionalism and attention to detail mentioned in previous reports.

Towards the end of training Tiff rocked up in knee high boots, red mini and see through plastic mac. She gave the Scotch college boys the famous Tiffany smile and I must reluctantly admit that their minds switched right off training except for one of the group showing a great deal of dedication to a cheeseburger.

Overall comment – the players are progressing well.

I have been asked not to comment on injuries in case it helps other clubs – thus there is nothing in this report.

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Posted 21 November 08 in News Training Report