Its Time Again

I wouldn't normally respond to a post like this but hey it's holidays in early Jan. You've now amended your opinion to say those players weren't ready but if they were in a team where everyone else was fit then all four of them could have been carried. Maybe you could carry two unfit players in the forward line like Dusty and Lynch and give them time to get fit but 4 players who make up the core of your engine room. I don't think so. Especially as you say surrounded by a team full of players with interrupted pre season. So not really sure of the point of your post.

DS living in Sydney I am very grateful for you and any others who go to the trouble to write up what they see at pre season training. It's really appreciated. However, I have to say I read them mainly to read who's training and not for most poster's opinions unless they are repeating info they've been directly given by the coaches or to a lesser extent the players. To state those players were ready to go just isn't logically correct. To be correct it would mean that you can miss up to 50% of the pre season sessions and it doesn't matter. Of course you can't be the same player without them. I went to pre season sessions in mid Dec and late Jan and from memory Trac and Gus were in rehab throughout that significant part of pre season. Roosy once discussed how little time the coaches have to actually train the players in the preseason. He said that if a player misses the conditioning work pre Christmas they never catch up and it heavily impacts their season. Post Christmas they have to concentrate on developing how they play and not conditioning. Clearly if you line up the 2018 Clarry who's done all the sessions and the 2019 one the first one is going to stomp on the second one and that's born out by his stats and he was a lot less effected than Trac and Gus. It's a nonsense to dismiss that impact and think they are ready to go.

Can you stay on topic please. Oh.....yeh. Should be in Melbourne the first week and hope to get to a training or two.

We'll have to agree to disagree. You're forgetting Jones and Viney didn't train in the main group at all and only played in one Casey practice game before playing round 1. Clarry from memory didn't join main group training until March. It was pretty clear he was missing Goody's keyword for 2020, "connection" which was to be expected. Coming in the top 5 B & F when you're in the engine room of a decimated team isn't that relevant. To suggest all you have to do is run laps and you are ready to go is to suggest that missing all the pre season training doesn't make any difference. Clearly that's nonsense. Brayshaw missed main group training from pre Christmas to well into Feb. Tracc also carried injuries and missed a lot of the main group training and could only run slow laps. That's basically the engine room. Hats off to Harmes but he was back into main group training much earlier than the others and maybe his injuries didn't restrict his running like it did the others. That's nearly the whole engine room. Don't know which preseason you were watching where they were all ready to go round 1.

Saty always thankful for your training reports but this is not your finest work. Given the overwhelming amount of detail the Club (President, Head of football, Coach, conditioning staff etc etc etc) provided about how unready physically the players were this is a bizarre post. It's worse than that, it's actually insulting the players to ignore everything the Club has said about the impact of physical injuries and suggest it was a mental problem. Disrespects the effort players who missed a pre season put in to nevertheless do their gut busting best.

Only 9 sleeps to go until the best DL pre season training threads recommence. Can’t wait. Life’s been so meaningless since the last ones. Happy New Year everyone. 2020’s going to be a ripper. Strap in my fellow long sufferers. It’s about bl$&dy Time from It’s Time.

His methodology is to rank Mids, Backs, Forwards & rucks. Top ranked gets 18 points worst gets 1. Add the all up to get overall ranking. His rankings for us Mids 8th Backs 13th Forwards 14th. Ruck 2nd. Add them up and get 39pts equal with Dogs at 7th, Fun exercise to do our own rankings. Our midfield ranked 8th for clearances and 5th for i50's this season. We know how many were effected by bad preseasons. Add a newly fit Petracca, AVB Langdon & Tomlinson to that midfield. I rank it 4th. Am I overrating a May & Lever led backline. I don't think so. I expect our backline to be right up there next year. My rank 4th. Forwards remain a worry. Don’t know what ranking was in 2018 when they were fit but we scored the most points for the comp. With the rest of the team firing and a fully fit forward line and remembering it was the highest scoring forward line in 2018 maybe 6-8 with good delivery. Ruck 2nd. Says Gawny better tap ruckmand but Grundy gets first because does more around the ground. My rankings add up to 60 which ranks us 4th.

Absolutely loving the journey this thread is going on. I've never ever resorted to Dr Google so many times in a 2 page thread.

They truly will be golden calves if they fully recover.

May the God of Calves smile on him and us.

Can’t believe it. I was coming down to see Friday’s session. Probably the only one I’ll be able to see this summer.

Maxy should try something really risque and do the opposite to what he's got. Get that cut for the chin and leave his head with a mop. Time to change it up.

You might be right. I might be right. Your prerogative to call BS. It's that time of the year. Your opinion's no less BS than mine. He might be getting specialist calf treatment for all I know. Or he might not. Who knows.

Hardtrack. I put up my hand. I have just done the biggest derailment of a thread I've ever been involved with. Yay!

Don't know why we didn't think of that before. Last year's venue at the Entertainment Quarter would have been perfect. There's no games up here in 2020 so hopefully 2021. Will pass the idea on to Sally T.

I will definitely make it to one of your gigs but not this weekend. I'm on crutches. Having a final Op next week which ends 3months of being virtually house bound. Old footy injury gave up the ghost. I'm heading to Old Melbourne town the same day and will be down there just in time to make it to the final training session in Melbourne next Friday. Will be there with a Jack Trengove type kneeling scooter. Hoping to take Saty on for a few laps of Goschs. Had a quick look at some of your YouTube clicks. Love your work!! Mate we need you to get the band together at our pre game NSW Demons events. Alas no games in 2020. Hopefully 2021.

I doubt the AFL would dictate what the training comprises. I'm sure the players that went away would have been doing some training around whatever else they were doing. Club might have decided full time training was more important at this point. On a sidenote HT are you getting the smoke I'm getting. I'm in the East near the coast. My backyard's full of billowing smoke. Never seen anything like it before. I can hear the boats on the harbour are having to use fog horns so must be so thick there they can't see through it. Wow, just had a look at a webcam. The harbour is completely blanketed. If anyone's interested here's a live webcam. You can barely see the Sydney Harbour bridge. https://webcamsydney.com/

MFC article on Club site said Tomlinson Langdon & Brown were there too.

If that's the case it gives you an idea of how tough his position is this summer. Allowed to train with us but treated as an outsider and not part of the team. Then on 6 March, if he makes it he's suddenly part of the team he's been treated as an outsider to. Seems very short sighted and culturally backwards. Wouldn't you want to give him the best possible chance of success on and off the field. I would have thought being made to feel a part of the Club was more likely to do that than being made to feel that you're not part of the Club.

Amazing how people can look at the same player and see such utterly different things. I’ll never forget that break out game at the Cats lair when at a critical stage he out ran his opponents and bobbed up in the forward line and kicked two match winning goals. That was good ANB. Unfortunately he’s become my most frustrating player. He has a technique for picking up loose balls especially in the forward line where he slides in and falls over and gets caught every time. If he doesn’t do that and snaps on goal he almost inevitably misses usually after ignoring someone in a better position. Or he passes in general play and turns it over. Oh for the original ANB. In 2018 he improved his kicking. This year it was back to its worst. Unfortunately he has not come on. He’s gone backwards badly. Personally as much as I hope he turns it around I can’t see it happening. How many years do you give him living in hope.

Thanks for that. Still not great news that his back is still an issue. Being a long term back sufferer I know how debilitating they can be

Bad news. This killed most of his pre season last year and apparently hampered him throughout most of this season. I couldn't understand why they wouldn't have rested him in this dud season to make sure he was over it. Maybe rest doesn't help. Sounds like training and playing doesn't either.

I've seen billboards advertising a cure for that problem.

I would hazard to guess this also reflects game plans. Bulldogs not a high marking team so have a game plan based more around keeping control of the ball with short passes to close targets where they can retain control of the ball. Whereas to a lesser extent Tigers kick longer and we kick longer kaos balls to contests. GWS are more of short kicking team as well. Not sure it's accurate they were top 3 worst kicking teams. Stats are only ever as useful as how people choose to use them.

Swans did OK in 2012 winning a Premiership. They went out straight after it and got a biomechanics specialist purely to work on the squads kicking skills. He was using all sorts of far out methods. He was filming everything they did and each part of their kicking techniques and working on improving them. They recruited a bloke a year later who was going OK. He'd won a couple of premierships. He had a weird kicking action when he arrived where he went right out on an arc. They retrained his kicking style after he arrived. He's going OK. He's now 7th on the all time goals list and about to pass 1000. His name is Lance Franklin. In theory you're right that you might expect 18 year olds to arrive with perfect kicking skills. But that's a fantasy. At least they have finally appointed a resource to focus on kicking technique. It's awesome he's gone out there to find whatever it takes to get the improvement. Instead of being upset about it you should be wrapped the Club's doing something about it. In 2018 we were the best converters inside 50. We're not miles away. Cheer up. Look on the bright side of life. Things are being done.