Duke

What does he look like? Has he grown? He’s listed as 184cm. When I was down a number of weeks ago, the recovery group include Lever and someone wearing Nietschke’s number, doing a 1 on 1, where they started in the goal square and one led hard and one defended. Lever was 100% trying to stop the Nietschke imposter, but couldn’t stop him, he was so quick off the mark. If he got a cm, he would turn it into a couple of metres. I was really impressed. Only downside was he didn’t have the strongest hands at full speed. But he looked close to 190cm next to Lever which confused me.

This is a first time post. I visited from Adelaide today. I don’t read Demonland a lot other than at this time of the season, and really appreciate those who do training reports. But knowing people involved in the club, this is not the place to spend too much time in season! I thought I would add my bit to preseason, although it’s 3 hours later so I have probably already forgotten half of it and Kev above covered some of it. I arrived at 9.15 and the players were already warming up. I stayed till the very end, which was just after 1pm with the last 3 off the track being Steven May, Jack Viney, and Marty Hore. They finished with goal to goal repeat sprints, which at the end of a 4 hour session was impressive. Even more impressive is May was side by side with Viney doing 22-25 second 170m sprints after 4 hours of training. It was about 80% ball work and 20% running at training. They started in 2 groups at each end doing non contact match sim inside the 50 arcs. The emphasis was on kicking skills. Every turnover was called out loud and clear by the coaching staff, even if was a poor that bounced. While this was going on AVB, Petty, and Bradke were doing repeat 200-300m sprints around the outside. AVB was setting the pace and looked in great nick. When he was leaving training he was saying that if 2019 was different he would have played in the back half of the year like 2018, and he feels he is 100%. From what I can tell he is doing lots of running but perhaps they don’t want to risk a Spargo like step on foot incident yet. After the skills match sim it changed to full oval match sim with the non contact players standing out. Lever, Weideman, Jetta etc we’re not standing around, but doing a lot of explosive agility type work in the unused forward pocket. The match sim was interesting. It would start with a congested activity somewhere upfield with an emphasis on ground balls. The players would repeatable roll the ball into a scrimmage, and then try and pick up and get a clearance and when they did just roll the ball back in. It kept going until the coaches blew a whistle which signalled it was real, and from a clearance they’d try and get it inside 50 to a lead. It was pretty willing, evidenced by Tmac (I think) leading out at full tilt with Hore drifting back and KK trying to spoil. Hore and KK were both flattened. Luckily no major harm although KK left training to get his elbow seen to. After the full oval match sim they broke up into various groups doing different activities. Mainly seemed to focus on skills, although some players would be cycled through activities that looked a bit like trying to work on explosiveness. For example, 3 players would be on their stomachs, and the coach would roll a ball near 1 and call out. 2 would jump up, the closest to get the ground ball and the second to tackle. Seemed to be working on recovery, getting to feet, evading or tackling etc. Another group were totally focussed on kicking to the wing. Others were doing 150m sprints, and other doing stoppages again with ground balls. For the ground ball stoppages, the coaches were continuously calling out for longer handballs to the outside. At one stage, Stafford was working on goal kicking. Hunt and Weideman did a lot of work. Then they setup a spot 40m out and had a camera directly in front and one to the side. Stafford was managing, and had Petracca, ANB, Oliver, Melksham, and Fritsch filmed for about 10 kicks each. No one else. Petracca still has a lot of work to do and I’m sure his routine will be sorted. Was still walking up to kick. The rest looked pretty good, but all seemed to be told to get some forward momentum, or at least compared to Petracca seemed to be accelerating in to kick with pretty good results. Especially Melksham who didn’t seem to miss. Some of the highlights for me overall were Petracca. He is in ripping nick, and ran in a group with Brayshaw and a few others in the repeat sprints. He is in better running nick than ever, was right up the front, and looked to handle it better than Brayshaw. Another highlight was May. It looked like he had to do extra’s, and he did not lag behind in any of the sprints. His group included Max and he was side by side with him the entire way. He also looks in great nick. In one drill, there was a handball chain that ended with a player at 40m running toward goal. May drilled everything. The other was TMac. He has his running legs, and was continuously getting in good positions and marking in the full oval match sim. Viney is doing all the running and more. His foot is not a problem touch wood, and he is loving the program Burgess has given him. Already he feels fitter than ever, and he did the extras. Oscar Mac looks in great nick and to have bulked up a lot. In the inside 50 skills match sim his kicking is really good. I didn’t see him miss a kick, which I probably couldn’t say about most of the squad. Overall, and I don’t have much to compare against as I didn’t see training last year, the squad looks in excellent nick. I did talk to a few of the veteran supporters to ask how it compares to prior years. They all seemed to think it’s the fittest they have seen them.