Webber

Total agreement with this........

Yep........

We need more quality expression on here Allus Monk, so I plead with you to post more. Romanticism and lyricism go hand in hand with football, and particularly as it relates to those all too emotionally invested observers........US! Heading into the realm of intangible character observation (if not spiritual fantasy), whilst I'm a huge fan of Brent Moloney and Nathan Jones as uncompromising club men, I have never, at any club, over too many decades, seen more obvious captain material than Jack Trengove. Maybe not this year, but just as next thursday is Australia Day, it is a cosmic certainty he will be captain of this football club, a premiership captain, and one of the greatest in our history.

Magner is 'unlucky'???? He hasn't played an AFL game!

Jack Watts, 65 goals plus.........it's just his time

Big skills session today. I arrived 10 am, and it was solid ball work for 80 minutes. Skills were very good considering the conditions. I think we're developing a forward line that can take a contested mark. Jack Watts is just a beautiful ball handler, end of story, and as his maturity and strength improve, he will sit on top like cream. Completely agree with previous post re: Howe....he is a standout, in all areas. Mitch Clark is also a serious athlete : agile, strong, skilled. Expect another big year from Steph Martin, also very skilled. A smokey may just come in the form of Jack Fitzpatrick. He has a very nice pair of hands, and again extremely agile for his size. Cannot agree about Luke Tapscott's legs......they are big, just not as big as his neck! He may have had a little testosterone overload as a toddler I suspect. The list as a whole is just noticeably bigger, due to another year of physical development, and that we have very obviously drafted size. Magner is Moloney like, and Couch is very solid. Sellar is a very big unit, and Clark is just a tad meatier than Scully! The reality is they are all serious athletes......not one of them had a physique that wasn't cut to the bone, and their foot and hand speed and reaction times are something to behold. We will not be unique as a team in this regard obviously, but I would urge anybody who has the chance, to get to a training session and see the elite level these guys are at. When you're sitting in the outer about to give someone a spray for a perceived lack of ability, it might just make you think twice. In the midfield, I have to mention Nathan Jones again, he is a training beast, and with Brent Moloney and Colin Sylvia, pretty much everything they touch on the training track turns to gold. They set a dynamic example for the youngers...... For anyone out there who worries about the effort that goes into their conditioning, or whether they are trained to a peak, both physiologically and skill wise, worry not. That WILL NOT be the issue. Their ability as a TEAM, and that team's ability to work together with confidence to a plan against an opposition with the same idea, THAT will be the issue, and we're not going to know anything about that til round 1 rolls around.......ain't it exciting?

Jeremy Howe, All Australian 2012, and nobody from outside the club saw it coming.....................you heard it here first.

Well said Footynut, Freak's suggestion that there is a less than optimal, or ideal fitness workload for any player and their specific situation is just monumentally ignorant. And that may be the understatement of 2012 thus far........

Missed the first 10 minutes, saw the rest of training. Agree with everything said above. Some extra points. LJ was running a lot of laps at a probably a quick 800 to I500 metre pace, looking very good, and very focussed. He's bulking up a bit too. No concerns with Sam Blease ... he struggles with the hard repeat 400's, but struggle is a relative term and he's trying his guts out it seems. He is like a rapier when it comes to the 60m sprint collect and deliver drills. Is also looking bigger. Jeremy Howe is a bit of a freaky athlete, in the Jones group for the 400's, very fast on the quick stuff, football smarts and very very sticky hands. If he has an injury free season, it will be breakout. Both Taggert and Tynan look very very willing, not out of place at all, and Tynan has some size. Saw Michael Evans doing slow laps. The suicide sprints from a lying down start were very interesting. Jack Watts, who fights to hang on the back of his 400m group, has a real battle with Neville Jetta for the honours in these sprints. Both of them are looking excellent. Mitch Clark looking very good, and clearly back into full training. Saw the midfield group do a one on one contesting drill from the ruck tap ... ALL looked good, (including Couch and Tynan) particularly Jonesy, who is a training maniac, and clearly indestructable, Trengove, who also just seems to love training, and Gysberts, who just seems incredibly smart and elite with his decision making, like JT. I have no doubt he will be a gun, just a natural and with guts. Both Joel Mac and Tommy Mc also excel in training. James Sellar is clearly being groomed for key backline. As everybody was finishing, he had Jade Rawlings kicking to him, whereupon he would sprint back from the mark, turn and hit Rawlings back on the lead. All in all, the guys look good, and enthused. Jack Watts does a lot of encouragement talk out there, as does Jonesy.

Entirely true Pringle......I threw some stuff about VO2 max and lactate threshold into an earlier post, and they are completely essential to modern football, and can be enhanced in any type of player. Repeat maximal efforts for the 'fast twitch' players deep into the last quarter are entirely dependant on a better VO2 max.......

All you need to do WJ is slip 5 or 6 speed bursts into that 4km, get a great calorie burn going, do it again tomorrow, then give that Christmas pudding a proper hammering! Cheers

No simple answer to that WJ. You can train them up as far you can train them up! There is potential, and a limit to the ultimate realisation of that potential (at least without performance enhancing drugs). There is no real risk of loss of pace, other than if you spend all their training energy and time on endurance, thus leaving their trump card merely underdeveloped. They would still be superquick, but maybe not with that freak edge. That's a significant factor mind you, and whilst we want lots of allrounders, as a team of 22 players, you do want some high end freak performers. To acheive this, it might be necessary to prioritise and maximise the speed of Sam Blease for example. It may be that his endurance capacity remains less than what it could absolutely be. To develop him that way would be a judgement call, and one dictated by the team dynamic I would suggest. On the issue of Aaron Davey, we all recognise that he was rubbish last year, but anybody who thinks they know how his pre Christmas training form influences his proper season form, given the multi-factorial nature of what creates a footballer, and such a seemingly engmatic one as Davey, is kidding themselves. 'the master' can reduce it to presumptuous simplicities all he likes, but those of us outside the club frankly have no idea, and I would suggest those at the club might not know until a month or so before the real deal begins.......

Praise indeed! Although mumbo jumbo to some apparently . Now if we could just get our ruckmen to maximise their quantum jumping!!! The 2B/2A stuff is really interesting, and highlights the degree to which tissue type and its transformative quality has a plasticity and potential which we've only just begun to really discover. I guess stem cell science is the bones of this, and is certainly becoming rapidly popular as a regenerative therapy (mostly tendons at this stage). I have little doubt this will be used/abused to alter muscle characteristics in elite sport. Really what all supporters want to see is their players trained to their potential, be it physical, emotional or intellectual (football related of course), but some on here are having trouble distinguishing physical determinants from mental determinants. All the athletic attributes in the universe aren't worth much without the right head game.......

Well said......there is a huge difference between footballers in their physiological profiles. The fact that Aaron Davey and Sam Blease struggle as soon as the endurance requirements build will have almost everything to do with their specific characteristics. Basically at either end of the spectrum you have pure sprinters, whose muscles have the highest percentage of 'fast twitch' fibres, at the exclusion of 'slow twitch' fibres (think Gary Ablett snr.), and pure endurance athletes, where the fibre typing is the reverse (marathon runners, the Schleck brothers of Tour de France fame). There is any variation in between these extremes, and numerous other factors come into play, such as height and limb lever lengths, which will affect specific abilities. As a rough generality, heavily muscled physiques (Moloney) will tend to have fast twitch predominance, as those fibres have a greater capacity for hypertrophy (growth), and skinny guys (Morton) the opposite. There is a misconception that skinny cultural types such as indigenous australians, are naturally endurance favoured, but I would suggest the vast majority of AFL indigenous players are fast twitch, 'burst' athletes, and given that they are represented in the AFL at 8 times their representation in the Australian population, they enjoy quite an extreme physiology. Every body has a percentage of fibres that can be influenced or trained either way, and a fast twitch athlete can improve their endurance, and slow twitch can improve their strength/power capabilities, but to a varying degree. Endurance abilitites naturally improve through the 20's and 30's, then slowly drop through middle age, which is why you see experienced players able to go longer through a game, and another reason why maturity is essential in your playing group (look at Geelong this year). Of course mental experience is also essential, but it is still largely physiological. This is basically related to an individual's 'VO2 max', that is, their body's ability to take in and use oxygen efficiently, and their 'lactate threshold', which is the point at which the body starts to rapidly develop lactic acid which will curtail muscle performance. We all have a genetically determined base level, and the rest is training and time. For example, Cadel Evans has the highest VO2 max ever tested at the AIS, and he was still a mountain biker at the time. He was born extreme. The fitness and coaching staff will be COMPLETELY aware of the characteristics of each player on the list, and their goal will be to maximise and make use of their extreme abilities (Davey and Blease for their burst speed), and improve their other end (ability to go all game) as best they can without risking compromise to their more unique talent. The fact that Davey and Blease couldn't stay with Leigh Williams merely tells me that Williams is probably more an 'all rounder' and will lack the special talent of either end. Thankfully, football requires a whole bunch of other abilities. As an illustrative anecdote, and one which I loved at the time, I was cycling a leg of the Tour de France in 2006 (organised for hacks like me every year, to see how the big boys suffer), and on the first 15 km climb of a 190km stretch, when I casually wheeled past Sir Chris Hoy, (he was just 'Chris' at the time) the Gold medal winner in the Cycling Sprint at Beijing 2 years later!!!. He had the biggest thighs I'd ever seen, but they were seriously struggling. He was interviewed after the event, quoting that it was the hardest day he'd ever had physically. I finished an hour faster than him, and am myself burdened by athletic mediocrity.......... horses for courses. On the topic of physical extremes, a colleague was consulting big Max Gawn a couple of days ago, the morning after his ACL repair and getting him upright for the first time, and wasn't quite prepared for his height (apparently he is smaller lying down!), to the point where she let out an exclamatory ''F*** you're big!" . Anyway, he's on the road back, good luck Maxy.

And he was BOG there in our last game this year........look out for the re-invention of Matthew Bate!

Whether this year or not remains to be seen, but I haven't seen a more obvious future captain than JT at any club, anytime, ever!

Absolute garbage......I could count on one hand the number of times he was caught with the ball this year and not dispose effectively. A legitimate criticism from 2 years ago, but most certainly not this year. As others have said, his improvement year to year has been obvious and marked, and clearly is a credit to the commitment we see in his training. There is no reason to think he won't keep improving, and he must be the coaching staff's dream player.

Completely agree......Martin is simply a better footballer than Mark Jamar, and has his best 4 to 5 years in front of him.

Absolutely correct. He is not 'one of the quickest', he IS the quickest, and as such will reinvent the big wing/goal kicking forward role. For all those concerned about our midfield, remember that next year is an extra year of maturity for those who have been just developing, particularly Gysberts, Trengove and McKenzie, whose games will be more rounded, and more resilient. Nathan Jones begins his peak form years next year, and a fit Rohan Bail and Michael Evans will give us so much more flexibility. If Moloney holds form (and I think he'll get better as he has to shoulder less of the load), and Neeld can get consistency from Sylvia, then I think we can relax about the midfield. As a bit of a smokey, I have a suspicion Matthew Bate may be looked at as a midfielder now. Logically, that is the only reason we would require him, and to be fair to him, he tore it up at Casey in the midfield, and was BOG in the only game he played there for the Dees. If it worked, it would be an amazing reinvention. As to Stefan Martin, he is a better all round footballer than Mark Jamar, and I actually see him as our no.1 mobile ruckman next year, unless Neeld puts Martin at CHB, which admittedly he would absolutely own. Mark Jamar needs to develop a higher possession game, because his tap-rucking can be a little one-dimensional, and was too easily sharked this year, and he gave us nothing around the ground. I also worry that he is still injury prone. The Mitch Clark get is a HUGE coup for the Dees........when does the season start??????????

Nope, he's our Jack Trengove, and would that he could reach ANY of the heights of Jimmy Bartel! One thing is, he will captain of an AFL club before JB! Maybe he'll acheive everything Bartel has, and that will be his point of difference, hehehee.

Except they have Sam Mitchell, who with Chris Judd is the best 'one touch' user of the ball in the AFL.

Would be a shame to lose Jetta, as he was showing good signs this year. Lots of upside for mine.

Saw him at my pub trivia night on Monday with a bunch of presumably Scotch mates.....he was walking happily with a bit of a limp. I was surprised he was so mobile.

The big bodied marking (or bringing to ground) forward is definitely the first hole filling priority it seems, a la Mitch Clark, Chris Dawes, Jesse White, Kurt Tippett. Do we have a young one in the making? I'm not confident, but I think Max Gawn's development is a key to it, given the freeing up of Mark Jamar, or him being a forward target on his own. I would love to think Stef's further development could see him be a stay at home forward, but ???? And do Lucas Cook or Jack Fitzpatrick look likely? Not so sure. Jack Watts will be able to play that role in 2 to 3 years I'm sure, but his abilities are so multifactored that I'm sure he'll be used as a higher possession player. Given that Carlton are after exactly the same type of player, it's going to be tricky to hook one of them this year. They always seem to come up with the $$$$ for the big trades, don't they?

Interesting you put Jordan Gysberts in that group. Every time I have seen him, I'm constantly surprised by the fact that he doesn't play like he looks. He is in and under, not afraid of taking a hit, and as he gets bigger, is going to surprise more people. He is far from a 'run off' type. I'd almost go so far as saying he has the biggest upside of our entire midfield list.