The Pies hit the track early on Monday morning, with the four players recently acquired by the club, in John McCarthy, Toby Thoolen, Jaxson Barham and Luke Casey-Leigh all starting early, for they were to miss the next two sessions due to the AFL’s induction session for all newly listed players.
Also in training were the three NSW/ACT Scholarship holders, in Scott Reed, Nick Perry and Thomas Young. The trio, aged between 15 and 18, are able to be groomed by the club until they reach an age at which they can be drafted, the club then able to decide whether or not to list them via the draft. Brodie Holland impressed with his sprint work and looks to be close to fully recovered from post-season achilles surgery.
The session, as expected, was slightly casual, a mixture of running and ball work, an interesting drill one which saw players run laps of the oval in continuous groups of three, shuffling the Sherrin between them before passing to an assistant coach.
Wednesday’s session was marked by the return of former skipper Nathan Buckley, only this time in his guise as an assistant coach with the AIS/AFL Academy squad along with Jason McCartney.
Another point of interest was the training debut of Lachlan Keeffe. Keeffe, 18, has been nominated by the club as a rookie, only to be officially drafted in a year’s time. Spotted in Gympie, north of Brisbane, Keefe is a soccer prodigy thought to have the ideal physique for league football. Though having barely played the game, development coaches Alan Richardson and Gavin Brown will be kept busy over the coming months.
However the early signs are good, Keeffe seeming to move well, and his footskills are better than average for someone who has rarely played the game before. The main stumbling block for all converts to the game is the ability to read the play, and hold your own in the whirlwind tempo. Experience here is the key, and so with a year in which to develop his skills, Keeffe should prove an exciting recruit in the years to come.
During the latter stages of the session, the main group split up into four, two groups of midfielders, a group of defenders, and a group of forwards, who each spent time with the assistant coach of their particular area of the ground.
With the mercury tipping 40°, Friday’s session kicked off an hour early at 8.00am, and there was to be no time wasting, the squad quickly into their stride with warm up drills, before taking on a series of ball movement drills, then partaking in a sanitised version of a scratch match, with the emphasis more or the movement of the ball rather than the physical side of the game.
One of the interesting features of this match was the duel between ruckmen Josh Fraser and Cameron Wood, the pair both with their sights set on the mantle of number one ruckman.
An intense tackle drill, conducted by Brad Scott, was short but sharp, players rotating the ball by hand quickly through the congested area, two players at a time donning protective padding not unlike what is worn in American Football, the drill lasting for the best part of five minutes; however it proved productive, for it ensured that the rust which might have gathered on the clean hands of all players was washed away.
With that, the group was then split up into four teams on either wing, focusing on clearing the ball swiftly from stoppages, before then pretending to move the ball from deep in defence.
The team will train for only one more week, before flying out to South Africa for the league’s Community Camp, and their third consecutive year of attitude training, on Friday.
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