With the lockdown has there been much interruption to pre-season at all?
I think it is a bit of a disruption, clearly, you’re trying to strike a bit of momentum with your pre-season and continually build your loads. So to sit on your hands for a week is not ideal but these are the challenges we face, especially in the world we live in at the moment.
I feel like our players adapted really well, all the staff around the footy club jumped into action really well to make sure that our players were really well set up when we came out of lockdown and just really grateful that all West Australians have done the right thing and were able to get back to normal in, hopefully, another seven or eight days. We are feeling very fortunate to be able to go back to training today and get a full session in.
How did you handle the week, did you have a fare few meetings or did you sort of just send them away and let them train a bit?
We have tried to maintain as much contact as we could, we tried to give them as much footy content and keep their minds as active as we could. We resorted back to the old WebEx and Zoom meetings like we did last year and try to strike a balance between not annoying them too much but making sure their minds are still on the job.
And with the first session back now is it straight back into full intensity or do you try and ease them back into it?
No, we will go back to doing a pretty big session, we have got footy content we need to hit today but also, we need to keep building them physically for round one. Games are going back to normal game time this year so we need to keep progressing our training loads and we will try to pick up where we left off last week.
Justin, did you fear the lockdown would be worse than one week? Did you worry at the start of the week that this could drag on for weeks and did you consider scenarios like moving the squad to the country?
Naturally, when you go into lockdown you don’t know what the numbers are going to be like every day so, yes, we had a lot of contingencies in place from best case scenario, which I feel like we have almost got, to worst case scenario.
Moving to a regional area was one of those scenarios. The other thing you can do in situations like this is you can plan a lot without knowing the detail and a lot of that can be wasted time as well. We tried to strike the balance without putting too much fear into our players and make sure that we planned around a lot of different scenarios.
How does it make you feel about the season ahead? It seems like our Government is the strictest in the country. Do you have any worry about your 11 home games and whether you could be jeopardised there?
Like we have seen this week, things can change really quickly and like we saw last year we will need to adjust to the Government and what the situation is telling us. We have a Government that puts the health and safety of its people first and we respect that, and we will adjust accordingly. I think, as a footy club, we need to be really flexible and approach every challenge as it comes. I thought we did that last year and we will do that this year if need be.
Do you have a date locked in yet for your scratch match with West Coast this preseason?
Hopefully, it’ll be in a couple of weeks. We are still in negotiations as to when the best time will be to lock in a pure date but, hopefully ,it’ll be in a couple of weeks as last week shouldn’t have disrupted us too much but there are other options.
Are you looking at the preseason game as the focus? Obviously round one is the most important thing but how do you sort of go day by day, week by week?
It’s about getting to round one as fit as we can be and as knowledgeable as we can be of the game plan. That’s the goal and we will use our pre-season games to help us get to that and they’ll be steppingstones. How our first intraclub looks will look slightly different given now we have had a week off, how the scratch match goes with West Coast will look slightly different. We will try to get a really good hit out in our pre-season game, our broadcasted game and then, hopefully, use them all as steppingstones to round one.
How did you feel about your last match simulation?
I thought we took a really big step forward and that was probably the most disappointing thing about going into lockdown, I felt like we were starting to get good momentum, we were staring to get good progression in our match sim and yeah hopefully we can pick up where we left off.
Did everyone come out of that unscathed?
Yes, and that’s probably always the most positive thing about pre-season intraclub against each other is that you get some good work into the players and push them to their limits without pushing them over. Touch wood we can continue to get through injury free.
How are Joel Hamling and Alex Pearce tracking?
I think they’re progressing really well. With Alex, we probably put his steppingstones into match sim a little bit slower than Joel, because he’s missed so much footy. I feel like he’s starting to hit the mark now and he joined in on 18 on 18 last Friday and he’ll join in again today. We’ll keep ramping him up.
You have a lot of magnets to fit into the backline. How are you going with figuring out who your best six or seven are?
We’re not worrying too much about it right now, to be honest. We’ve got a lot of footy ahead of us before round one and these things have a habit of working themselves out. Whoever’s in best form will get their magnet put on the board and I’m sure it will look like a good backline when we come to round one.
When do you expect to have Sean Darcy back?
We expect him to play some games in the pre-season. We’re hoping he’ll be ready for our (AAMI Community Series) game against Adelaide. That will give him a couple weeks after that, leading into round one. We’re pretty confident he’ll be there.
Are you concerned about Darcy’s durability?
Every player gets managed and it’s literally the case. Every player has their own personal programs. I’m really confident that this is just a little mishap and he can return to being the durable player he was at the end of last year. He did play a lot of footy for us.
How is Michael Walters going?
Tracking really well. He’ll do some match sim today. He’ll probably do around half of it, which is a great progression for him. We’ll continue to build him and he’s looking really positive for round one.
And Griffin Logue?
He’s tracking well. He’ll do some training today and he’ll build much like some of the others. He had a little hammy, which he did probably about three weeks ago now. It was more precautionary than any. He’s had a bit of history with injuries, so we just looked to get a little more load into him and build him up. He’s right to go now.
How is Sam Sturt?
‘Sturty’ is still progressing from that ankle injury at the end of last year. It’s been a really slow build. It’s been a little bit slower than we would have liked and he would have liked. He’s probably going to be pushing it for round one at this stage but he’s back running a little on the grass now.
He’ll look to build into some sort of training over the next couple of weeks and we’ll ramp him up as quick as we can, but on the flip side, we’ve got to make sure he’s durable and when he comes back, he’s ready to go and also resilient enough to withstand a whole season.We’re really excited about what he can do, we’ve just got to make sure we’re really careful with him.
Liam Henry missed the WAFL stage last year, going straight from school footy to playing AFL. Are you considering a block of WAFL before he goes back into the AFL this season?
Time will well about how he performs in the pre-season, but every indication we’ve got at the moment is that he’s ready to play AFL.
He’s leading a lot of our running. He’s improved his fitness out of sight, he’s definitely got that up to an AFL level now. He just needs to be able to put it all together and impact in his role.
Is Henry bigger and stronger as well?It was a big goal last year, especially his lower body strength. He had knee issues coming into the club and a large part of that was to get his lower body strength to a point where it made him more resilient and he’s done that. He’s worked really hard over the off-season on his fitness and came back in unbelievable shape. He’s put his hand up for some game time.
Did you feel the AFL had a double standard when the other 16 clubs continued training after you went into lockdown, yet you had to go through training restrictions last year to match other states?
Not really. I think all of our communication with the AFL was if it dragged on any more than a week they would come back into like with what WA was. Both WA clubs probably saw it as us taking one for the team at the moment. Brisbane went through it earlier in the pre-season where they just had to be in lockdown and every other team trained. I think the AFL handled it really well and we were ready to shift if our lockdown dragged out any further. We’re fortunate enough now to be able to train and all of our club should be right to go.
Is Stephen Hill in the rehab group at the moment?He is. He had a little issue with his calf, a little bit of tightness through there. Having not set eyes on him for the last week and given his history, we’re just going to ease him back into training. He should be fine to go by the end of the week but sitting around at home all week, it doesn’t make sense to throw him into training so we’ll just take it easy with him.
You’ll do a full on match sim today?Like I said, we’re going to ramp it up, try and pick it up where we left off last week. We’ve got very little time to waste so it will be pretty much only match sim today. That’s the main reason why he’s (Hill) is over on the sidelines.
