Its Time for Another

If you like that. Try this one. Theia shadow.

Different person. Much younger. He was a very short full forward for Hawks who had a couple of excellent years and was then traded to Essendon where through injuries and loss of form he never had much of an impact.

Reminds me of an American sex education video we were shown in a Religious Studies class in about Year 9 at school. This was mid '70's. A kid was standing outside his High School with a beaming face proudly saying "I got it!"

How so? Fill me in

Judging by your avatar you're a Usual Suspect. When Biffen was playing for us his father Leo, worked for my father and was a game day trainer for the team. I used to go down and annoy him with a thousand questions every time I went to my father's business. He used to give me used MFC training footys. I felt like a millionaire.

Salute to the greatest political slogan I can remember. I believe Singleton came up with it for Labor's 1972 campaign which broke their 23 year electoral drought. Drought breaking hit an obvious nerve for a lifelong Dees supporter. When I chose it in about 2007 I thought we were entering the new era that was going to break our drought and I didn't expect it to be relevant for more than a few years. Oh well. Will gladly replace it when it becomes redundant. Although by then it will be relevant to the 2 peat and then the 3 peat etc. The slogan and it's success had some significant impacts on my families lives. My brother had just been advised he was going in the next lottery for conscription to the Vietnam war. Whitlam won the election and immediately stopped conscription which probably saved my brother going there. He also brought in free tertiary education which I benefited directly from. That slogan heralded in one of the craziest political periods in our history. A breathtaking series of political reforms such as the Marriage Act and land rights and economic madness like the Khemlani affair and Junie Morosi. Who'll ever forget Al Grassby. Ahh they were the days. All leading to our greatest political crisis. What a slogan. My avatar succinctly sums me up. We were born on the same day. Not the same year though. I got the clown bit without the genius bit but hopefully a healthy sense of the absurd. Other less kind people might say I got the absurd without anything else. Anyhow..... It's Time.

......and Beyond

The other thing it does is make you appreciate the quantum leap in standard to the Firsts and just how good they are. A bit of perspective can be a good thing.

Better than the alternative.

Interesting binman. What a minefield that decision is going to be next season. Petty clearly is holding his arm. It's one thing to push someone but surely it's another to actually grab hold of their arm and hold onto it to twist their body away from the contest. I thought the only change to the rules was that you can put hands on the back now as long as it isn't a push. Good luck to the poor umpires deciding when hands in the back are or aren't a push. If I was a forward I'd just lung forward just a bit when I feel the hands on my back. How could an umpire tell if it is a push or a dive. I can hear the supporters howls from here. Including mine. And it's probably not the umpires fault. Talking about rule changes. I can't believe they didn't do away with the ruckman having to nominate and just give a free if two players from the same team go up in the ruck contest. That rule very nearly cost us a finals spot thanks to Dangerfield's antics. The other is the protected area. I guess that can be fixed by interpretation rather than changing the rule itself. But this season this rule was completely inconsistent and potentially disastrous in several games.

When I started going to thre footy you could watch the U19’s, Reserves then the Seniors. From memory Robbie Flower went through all 3 in the one season by May. and never left the Seniors.

I've got SpecSavers. I better swap.

When I was there last week I was standing next to someone and we identified the drone and couldn't believe how steady it was. Just didn't move. We looked again some time later and it was still rock solid in exactly the same position. I was fascinated then realised why it was so steady. It actually wasn't a drone it was a street lamp. I'd be taking my training reports with a grain of salt if I get back there again. I now fear I might have given a training report on the Melbourne Storm by accident.

As a Junior coach I always followed the AFL bred philosophy. Train like you play. In this case this would clearly be a free against Petty. Don't see the point of this other than a good philosophical exercise for Nietschke in practicing body contact.

Thanks again Six6Six. As usual an outstanding set of photos.

Now that you mention that I have seen him doing that. Would love to find out from him if that's actually what he's doing. Another question for Saty to ask.

I have some mates i ride with in Melbourne from time to time and also out of town. Maybe we could link up for a cruise to Mordialloc and a coffee with them at some stage. We went up to Bright in April and rode Hotham and Buffalo. Great experience. Maxy Gawn rode the 3 Peaks challenge last year which is Tawonga Gap, Hotham and the back of Falls Creek. It has a time limit. Amazing effort for anyone but especially someone who's 208cm. No doubt set up his pre season when could walk again.

Interesting info. I only ran a few 400's. Isn't it known as the toughest race because its the perfect distance for lactic acid overload. I remember completely seizing up after a couple. I wasn't much of a runner. Where do you ride? Is it Adelaide?

Nice. You have to be a certain age to get that. I did 1500's at school and 800's a bit after school. Broke an ankle playing footy in my late 20's that was the end of the very mediocre running and playing career. Been a cyclist every since. Alas only worked out how to stop throwing up a few years ago on the other side of middle age. There's a lot of people who would have preferred I'd worked that out many decades ago.

Thanks Dazzle. That’s high praise coming from you. Alas I’m lucky to get to training once every few years.

I would love to do that at some stage. This Saturday is crazy. Have 3 functions we’re meant to be going to. One of them in Melbourne which it looks like the better half is going to fly down to after we’ve spent all day at another one.

Were you a runner Ernest?

Good news. Just read someone on the Melbourne Football Club, The Mighty Demons Facebook page saying he attended training from the beginning and Lever was there running laps. But someone else posted an article saying he's not expecting to be back until mid season. Not sure if that's true or not but I thought ACL's were generally 12mths so that would be right. Might also be going super conservative after Docherty at Carlton ruptured his again yesterday after just coming back from 12mths recovery.

Yeh I agree. I thought cameras on phones was going to be a gimmick. But they turned out not to be. I wouldn't have had a camera with me as I wasn't planning to be there. I tried to play with them a bit but the quality deteriorated too much. But I was surprised how good they are considering they're just from a phone.

These photos are off my iPhone so apologies for quality. These are a sequence of the players doing the 150m sprints in pairs. You can see from the faces how hard they are working. This is KK and J Smith who were always the lead pair. You can see the next pair just starting. That's Miso first in on the right. He had a stop watch and was counting them off. A lot of them had their own heart rate monitors and timers on their wrists. ANB and T Mac. You can see how they've matched pairs in their running ability Good to see Fritschy already in his second season matched with the Skipper Sparg's not throwing up yet but in a feet not touching the ground mood with JKH Good to see Melk back in the main group at least for running and with his best mate. This is why we got both of them These guys were always the last pair. Maynard is just getting back into full training after 6 months or so out. Not sure why Frosty is there.They weren't lagging too far behind although Maynard was tiring by the end. These two were separated from the rest. I reckon it's another sign of how professional the training is nowadays. Ruckmen clearly can't run like elite running midfielders so why make them try to compete against people they can't and don't need to because they have a different role. But put them against someone else they are closely matched two and they'll be able to push each other much further. Same goes for all the other pairs. It's smart organisation and attention to detail. What I also really like about this photo is the look on Gawny's face. This is not the joker Gawny face, this is the professional sportsman driving himself to continue to be the best player in the competition in his role. That is the very serious Gawny face fighting the pain barrier. You can also see what a monster Preussy is. This photo doesn't do him justice. He looks about 20% wider than Gawny. He's a huge package. I'm sure having Gawn to compete against constantly will be raising the bar for both of them. I'd love to know what it's like compared to what he was doing at North. Saty good question for you to find out. Best mates paired together. Attention to detail again. Happy players. Successful team. You can see the pain Hibbo's putting himself through. This is the preparation stuff we don't usually know about during the season. Funnily enough Melksh looks like he's suffering less even though he's just coming out of rehab. Shows you how they stay in rehab a long time because when they are released they are back up to the standard of the main group and can slot straight in to the main training. Wagner brothers paired together. I guess they did a lot of this at Casey but they must be loving it with the big boys. Petty is keeping up with them pretty comfortably. He looks like he's a very good package of skill and athleticism. This is the group jogging back between 150m sprints running past the trainers in red who were picking balls up for them to pass to each other and back as they jogged back to start the next 150m.