Great afternoon for training, plenty of sunlight, nice and dry, not exactly warm but not cold either.
Jigsaw was at training again as was Keiran and Matthew which gave us a total of 12 players. I had Tim, Dave and Marty helping out which made things a lot easier.
We went for a bit of a run around the oval to start training which some players seemed to like but others weren’t as happy. Then we got straight into a couple of handball and kicking drills. I’m actually really happy with the skill level, some of the boys are excellent at handballing, marking and kicking. Not everyone is at the same level but I can see improvement in every player.
The bump bags came out next and the boys were really hitting the bags hard (in particular the one I was holding). We need to improve our bumping technique but the intent is certainly there, I don’t think anyone was holding back. Luckily we had Tim at training and he took the boys through a couple of tackling drills which the Perth Football Club use. The boys tried their best to execute the drills correctly but I think it would be fair to say we need a lot more practice before we master them. I thought it would be a good idea to introduce the boys to tackling correctly because tackling will be introduced next week when we play in the Super 8s carnival. I have a feeling that none of these boys will be worried about being tackled or tackling someone else – they’ll actually enjoy it.
To close off training we had some match practice. This game was as intense as a Western Derby – there was no one taking a backward step. Alex was tackling anything that moved (you didn’t even have to have the ball), Luke was tough and hard and involved in everything, Jared crunched Dylan in a marking contest – and they were both on the same team. Matthew wasn’t shy to get in hard for the ball against the older kids and Jayden seemed to cop a couple of heavy knocks but he kept going. Jigsaw was providing plenty of laughs, he just wants to get involved and learn how to play footy.
It was an excellent training session, everyone gave it 100% effort – I couldn’t be more happy with the boys efforts.