I went down there with a mate and it was our first training session ever. I had to email the club last week to see if training was on as I had to get work off.
We didn’t get down there until 10:30 and they finished at around 11:30 which was a little poor. The pies next to them were training for quite some time afterwards.
From what we saw the main group were doing match simulation, the skills were ok, but a little sloppy at times. After a few people knocking Dawes last week, he looked in pretty good nick this time around. As people have mentioned before, all the players and coaches are really vocal. People screaming for the ball and congratulating nonstop. You can also hear the coaches giving constant advice during each play.
We went over to the far side of the ground and watched Toumpas and Hogan doing short kicking to each other. It’s been said before, but Toumpas has a very “delicious” kick on him. Then both of them took in turns at kicking at goal from an angle. They were very accurate and rarely missed. They both smashed out a bunch of push ups which Toumpas did with ease compared to Hogan who was a little slower. Most people have already mentioned how big Hogan is for a 17 year old, but I was also very impressed with Toumpas’s size. He is a big boy, looks very fit, and has the body to go round 1 in my opinion. After that, Hogan ran laps.
Most of the time we were there Gawn ran constant laps, and you could hear everybody yelling encouragements to him as he ran past them. He is a giant, and has a very big body. Disappointing he isn’t training with the main group though.
From the time we were there we didn’t see Mitch Clark, Sylvia, Tapscott, Trengove or Barry. We did turn up late however.
After the match sims, they all went into their line groups (backs, mids, fwds), then broke up into heaps of little groups.
Forwards were leading out of the square, as another player would run in and kick it from outside 50 to them. It was a pretty basic exercise, but we still saw a few fumbles. Fitzpatrick was one we saw drop a very basic one, but you could see he was dirty on himself for it. Blease, Davey and Burns all looked pretty solid from what we saw from a distance. We actually thought Davey looked in really good physical condition. He was moving well and still has a very solid kick on him.
In what I thought was a strange drill, JMac and Strauss were being thrown the ball, and they would take in turns just fisting it unopposed back to the coach. It really wasn’t the most impressive drill.
On the other side the backs were getting the ball kicked to them and they would have to body the other player out and spoil. It was on the other side of the ground so I didn’t get a great look at it.
We also noticed Watts kicking is still one of the best in the club. It was good to see him in the main group after reports he has been in the rehab group.
Not long after a lot of the players started to walk off, but a small midfield group remained. One coach would throw it in the air to another coach, who would tap it down to 2 players. One of the players would grab the ball and bolt as hard as possible to a cone about 20 meters away. I liked this drill as it would be awesome to see our mids try and break the lines more and take the game on. From memory the group consisted of Viney, D-Rod, Jones, Couch, Jordie and Davey. They all looked pretty sharp in this drill.
Then everyone headed off, but Jordie and Couch stayed out on the field doing some kicking and close handballs to test Couch’s reaction time. Neil Craig also took Viney out one on one and did some kicking for goals, etc.
We managed to talk to Neil Craig who asked us how long we had been Dees supporters, which we said all our lives, and he said hopefully they can bring us some success soon. He seemed like a really nice guy who was more than happy to chat with us. He said he thinks Viney will be good to go round 1, and talked up Viney and Toumpas and said they will bring us a lot of success and exciting footy. He said he doubts Trenners will be ready to go round 1 as we would probably already expect.
We also managed to have a quick chat to Viney. Such a big unit for his age. He was happy to chat, but it felt like he was giving us the standard footy player answers “yeah the boys are putting all the effort on the track”. We told him Craig said he should play round 1 (sorry Craigy, we leaked your inside information to the player instantly haha), and Viney was pretty excited by the news. Also asked him how Mitch was going and he said he isn’t with the main group but hopefully he won’t miss too much as he is important to the team.. obviously.
So while we didn’t catch much of the day, it was good to finally see a practise. There were maybe 8 people watching all up? I guess the tennis and the fact that the club didn’t advertise on their website kept numbers down.
Tweet from Jay Clark