The Hawks have designed a varied pre-season program that will see them head to four states and territories before they play a competitive match in 2009.
Coach Alastair Clarkson took some of the club’s younger players to Northern Territory last week and on Tuesday some of the more senior players went to Coffs Harbour in New South Wales.
The club will complete its pre-season campaign at its Waverley base before travelling to Tasmania for its AFL Community Camp in February.
General Manager of Football Operations Mark Evans said most of the senior list had made the trip to Coffs Harbour after a similar camp last year.
“Last year we took the older two-thirds of the playing group to Coffs Harbour for a performance training camp and got some really good training and quality outcomes out of that,” Evans said.
“The boys went up there on Tuesday and will return on the weekend. It’s a really intense, focussed group of training sessions with some guest speakers. There is a heavy focus on fitness but the assistant coaches will also run through some of the plans for this year.
“It’s about training performance and setting the scene for 2009.”
Evans said the club’s five new draftees Ryan Shoenmakers, Luke Lowden, Jordan Lisle, Liam Shiels and Shane Savage had adjusted well since arriving last week.
“They’ve all settled in well. They’ve already developed some pretty close relationships with each other which is common when you get a group of kids come through at the same time. A couple of them are only 17 and still need to complete their VCE studies next year,” he said.
“We’re prepared to give them the time to develop and they’ve just spent four or five days in Darwin and on the Tiwi Islands with Alastair and some of the other young players. It’s been a whirlwind trip for them to be drafted and then on to Darwin. The time will come and go before Christmas pretty well for them.”
Evans said the club would be careful to manage the youngsters as they adapted to the training demands of AFL football.
“Every draftee that comes in has a modified program. You can’t really expect them to do what the more mature players are doing. They wouldn’t have done a lot of training because of the Darwin trip. They’ve had three or four sessions so far and they usually partake in 70 per cent of training,” he said.
