Search the Community

Those complaining about our injured talls should be happy with this quote from the website. Well see a number of players returning and playing their first game for the year, including a number of talls: Max Gawn, Mark Jamar, Chris Dawes, Jack Fitzpatrick and Jesse Hogan. Wed anticipate that the majority of players in this game would be preparing for our second NAB Challenge game in Alice Springs and the following practice match against Hawthorn at Casey. Sounds like we'll have close to a full list to pick from by the second practice match, fingers crossed nobody gets injured during the NAB challenge. Can't remember the last time we went into a season, or a game for that matter, with anywhere near a full list to pick from. Go Dees!

With the opening of the NAB Challenge competition imminent, I suppose many are all trained out ... anyone going?

That's right - the next open training session and the only one for next week will be held on Friday 7th February, 2014 at Goschs Paddock at 9.30am. That's a sure sign that Paul Roos and his crew mean business with the start of the season closing in fast. In many ways, we Demon fans have been spoiled with three open training sessions a week at two different venues but that is definitely not the norm at many other clubs. Over at the Gold Coast Suns they're still advertising their 18 January open beach training session on the Palm Beach foreshore. When I turned up last week to watch them train I discovered that I was the only person interested enough to watch their closed training session on the oval next to Metricon Stadium from behind a wire fence. (Yes I know - it was a closed session and the weather was too good even for watching G. Ablett Junior sweat his socks off). So given that we're unlikely to be the recipients of Roger's excellent training reports and/or Tasman's equally marvelous descriptions, I thought it might be a worthwhile exercise to guess what style of play Paul Roos is instilling into his charges behind closed doors (or wire fences). On that subject, I came across this interesting article in the Age last week - Clarkson prepared to tinker with his premiership winning Hawks. Of course, he needs to change given the loss of a star like Franklin but Clarko shows that he's switched on. Nothing stays the same and besides, every coach will have spent some time trying to work out ways to beat the 2013 premiers so he knows he can't stand still anyway. At the other end of the ladder, I think Roos has the advantage of a team that should have a different mindset, will have substantially different personnel in the midfield and hopefully a bigger, stronger and healthier forward line. I would expect Roos to concentrate on our strengths in developing a style of play while attempting to shore up our weaknesses. I suspect that in doing so, he will show some flexibility so that if Plan A doesn't work, that won't be the only option available for the team so that we can keep our confidence intact rather than fall away completely as we have in recent years.

Time has flown and here we are - a few days away from the footy and two sessions this week in the lead up to Friday's NAB Challenge. Training is on at the usual time at the Paddock tomorrow (Monday) and again on Wednesday. We should get some sort of idea as to who will comprise the 24 (?) who get to run out onto Etihad at the start of our new era. Bring it on.