Arrivals
Onfield: Jack Ziebell, Samuel Wright, Liam Anthony, Nathan O'Keefe, Warren Benjamin, Marcus White (rookie), Luke Delaney (rookie), Benjamin Speight (rookie), Alan Obst (re-rookie-listed), Conor Meredith (international rookie), Nathan Grima (elevated from 2008 rookie list), Michael Wundke (elevated from 2008 rookie list)
Off-field: Anthony Rock (assistant coach – midfield)
Departures
Onfield: Shannon Grant (retired), Jess Sinclair (retired), Nathan Thompson (retired), Leigh Brown (delisted), Ben Davies (delisted), Blake Grima (delisted), Eddie Sansbury (delisted), James Wilsen (rookie, delisted)
Off-field: Tim Harrington (list manager)
Pre-season training started: Monday, November 3
Training resumes post-Christmas: Monday, January 5
Medical room
Robbie Tarrant (shoulder): Started running and kicking in the week before Christmas and will increase his workload and strength across January and February. Club doctors are impressed with his progress and aim to have him available for round one
Ed Lower (shoulder): Entered full contact training – including wrestling and grappling – well ahead of schedule and will continue that in January
Daniel Pratt (shoulder): Is roughly one week behind Lower in his rehabilitation and is expected to start contact training next month. Has been held back because of his history of shoulder injuries
Adam Simpson (shoulder): Also ahead of schedule and involved in skill sessions but is one week behind Pratt
Jesse Smith (ankle): Has got through all aspects of the pre-Christmas block but has been removed from the main group's mid-week session to focus on management of his injury
Nathan Grima (knee): Like Smith, has had full sessions on Mondays and Fridays but involved in cross-training on Wednesdays
Leigh Adams (knee): In a similar situation to Smith and Grima
Who's burning?
Andrew Swallow played the first three games of 2008 before he was omitted, then injured an ankle in the VFL. It's the 21-year-old's fourth pre-season and, running better than he ever has, is looking to reclaim a regular midfield spot.
Key position player Lachlan Hansen and ruckman Todd Goldstein, both in their third pre-seasons, have improved again with Hansen among the leaders in the squad's time trials.
Strength and conditioning coach Paul Turk says the second and third-year players are setting the standard on the track with a clear hunger to play more games in 2009.
Pre-season training camps
Assistant coach Darren Crocker co-ordinated a two-day camp at Wilsons Promontory on Victoria's southern coast at the start of December. The squad was broken into groups, trekked over 60km and put through activities to test physical and mental toughness. It also served as an introduction for the five new draftees.
North's February community camp will be held in Ballarat.
Pre-season training overview
"There has been lots of strength work and lots of endurance running, getting that base into them.
"We've got individualised programs over the break which will allow the players to get straight into football work once they come back.
"Generally, if you do a full pre-season you end up playing every game. The guys that are on the track and getting the hard yards into their legs will have good years. Hamish McIntosh, Michael Firrito and Corey Jones had interrupted pre-seasons last year. This year they've come back and got through every week. We've got the most players through this pre-season period that I've seen in my three years here.
"All of the running that we do is football-specific. It's not just running laps or doing 3000m time trials. Everything we've done – the weights, the core, the running, the swimming and bike sessions – are based around the GPS data from games [this year] and physiological demands.
"When I first took over [in 2006] we did about 80 sessions in the six weeks before Christmas. As of [December 22] we've had 109. With the maturity of their muscles and the conditioning that's coming through, we can get more work into them.
"The way they've gone about it this year has been sensational. They've really attacked it and are very self-driven."
– Paul Turk, strength and conditioning coach
Where they will train post-Christmas: North will continue the pre-season at its Arden Street base, with Turk highlighting that access to the oval has massively benefitted his program.
What assistant coach Darren Crocker says:
"Pre-Christmas was always designed to get a fair bit of volume into the guys, which has culminated in a couple of really tough sessions in the last week before our break.
"You get a bit toey in the last week coming into Christmas because you think that you've got the volume into them. Everything's gone pretty much according to plan so far. We've had most of the players on the track doing most of the sessions. That's pretty much what our expectations were, not to lose anyone with soft-tissue injuries for an extended period of time. The only guy that hasn't been able to join in and tick a lot of the boxes has been Robbie Tarrant, who had to have his shoulder reconstructed very early in pre-Christmas training.
"After Christmas, we've basically got five weeks before our first NAB Cup game so we'll really start to drill down on the footy stuff."
The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL.
