Thanks for report
@TigerFlag2017 .
A few extra observations:
Shai, Bakes and Shorty not there today.
Tom Brown : Can see him playing early, (smart player can see him making the right decision 95% of the time, knows when to go and when to stay, reads the game so well).
Judson Clarke : Don't see many lefties that are capable of kicking on their non-preferred looks to me like Judson can and won't get corralled, has great lateral movement, (
very light but may be hard to catch a bit like Shai), was up towards the front in most of the running so can see why they may have plans beyond just a small forward in time.
Syd : TigerFlag17 already covered but I can confirm there were 3 conditioning drills one at the start, middle and end, (each were repeat sets of different distances with 30 sec breaks in between), Syd finished within the pack and not last in any of these so were very happy to see that.
Sonz : Finally getting some running into his legs so looking forward to his footy skills in the New Year.
Soldo : Beast, please no more arthroscopes, (this big lug is as important as anyone in our climb back up the ladder).
Dusty : Joined the main group in a lot of the non contact drills and of course looked a cut above, (laps and conditioning otherwise).
Junior : Think his endurance has improved out of sight, let's see how it will translate I think he would/will be a better player when he starts sweating the ball rather than the man and just looking for a tackle. Always has a big grin on his his face, a real character. (Still a watch and see for me though).
Hugo: I had him along with RCD to be the 2 players to go bang but he has not quite exploded this pre-season as I expected but thought today was the best he has looked.
Ok let's cut to the chase who is going to or can make us better next year :
Soldo : Will compete with the monsters and clear a path for our mids.
Shai more midfielder time please.
Brown into the back 6 mix and Stackman forward.
RCD : Make the most of his explosiveness and be damaging forward of center, (I am not expecting him to all of a sudden turn into a 2 way runner).
Tarrant : I put him in as i thought we were going to have a huge hole with DTLD retirement but slots in seamlessly.
Balta : Was treading water a bit before injury and a little caught out by having to be the main man with our defensive injury carnage.
Dow : A wild card, hasn't been able to participate fully because of his shoulder, his running capacity seems to have gone up, he does not stand out in full ground non- contact circuit work as I do not believe his kicking is that great but still see him as being elite in tight so will have to wait for post Christmas training to see how that pans out.
A fit Dusty
Lynch : I have a sense under forward coach Teague he is in favor of lowering eyes and hitting up marking targets and raising eyes ignoring the obvious and finding a marking target over the back, (maybe a bit less reliant on the chaos ball?). Might play into big Tom's hands?
Find an elite wingman? Don't know who can fill that.
(Less injuries of course).
All in all I haven't been blown away thus far and we haven't had any scratch matches or any intense physical contested work really at this stage. There has been NO center bounce ruck work all pre-season. I am guessing we were basically just after some conditioning and no clash injuries leading up to Christmas.