Hey All (my first post so be kind)
Great event for us WA supporters to have the players for a dinner last night with all in attendance including the coaching and support staff.
Since we very rarely ever get to meet the players as they often leave straight after matches for flights home it was great to catch up and finally meet a lot of the new boys. (The last time they did a group event Viney was captain ) We also met some of the old boys such as Darren Kowal and Dean Irving. To some this will be old news and some rehash.
Anyway since I read a lot of the boards here with adding too much, I thought I'd give some of the conversations I had with the players and coach.
We had Bruce and Junior on our table which was great and I asked them about the differences in coaching from Neale Daniher to Dean Bailey.
The biggest change besides all the new development skill coaches is that Bailey has set plays whereas Daniher had a general game plan on moving the ball - which explains a lot of the players decision making processes during his years.
Mark Jamar is really enjoying being the main ruck and his performances are starting to show it and he loves playing footy (he was the only player who mentioned this). He says he will play as long as he can even after AFL.
Chris Johnson - starting to enjoy his footy after getting a real chance and was really happy with the change in management (coaching) so I think he's about to come good. Which is great for us and him. When I spoke to Bailey about Chris he said they're really working on hitting targets with his kicks but he's found like last week, and with a lot of the players they will often hit a hard target but screw up the easy ones!
I was a bit embarrassed as I didn't recognise him as I've only seen 3 games on TV over here this year as they are always on Fox (which I don't have), thank god for radio streaming over the web. And hadn't seen a lot of him in the last few years when we got good coverage as he never got a game.
Colin Sylvia - one frustrated boy about no being able to get his game going and maintaining the required consistently. I didn't raise the issue he did, so he's working on it and it'll click for him soon.
Nathan Jones - talk to him about the hard time getting the main tagger most weeks, but he'll get there.
Junior - his body is getting there, and hopes to play on next year.
Cam Bruce - enjoying the footy but with all his running as he averages about 15 km a game, its taking a toll and he's taking more than a day or two to recover each week.
Paul Wheatley - congratulated him on his great torp last week and a pity it didn't come off. He said he did let the boys know that was where he was going. Would have been great with one of the big boys running off the back of the square to crash the pack and take a mark in the centre.
I spoke to Bailey for a bit as I raised the fact that the Dee's under Daniher had no set plays. He said he was very surprised as well when he took over which is why I think the boys have taken so long to adjust. He also mentioned even back in his playing days at Essendon even then they had a few basic set plays with Sheedy. We spoke about how the boys are improving and like us he gets frustrated at those good passages of plays that get turned over by the last fumble or missed target as we're about to set up score! But he is happy that those turnovers are no longer resulting in goal by default by the opposition, like earlier in the season as we're getting control of the ball back.
Only chatted briefly with the other boys while getting autographs. But the young boys a lot bigger than I expected especially young Morton who is going
a big size (hopefully powerful) midfielder in a few years.
Otherwise there were about 200 people there and we raised about 7k on the night for the club.
Now to enjoy my only live game tomorrow.
Cheers
Kane
Anything else I remember I'll add later.
