By warburton lad 

A special greetings to all Magpie fans who live in the country or overseas. I hope this report fills you in a little.

Arrived at Heaven’s gate at 7-45 and got a park right out front- bliss!
Upon entering the ground, was pleasantly surprised to see how great Victoria Park was looking. With all the Collingwood bunting and six marquees placed around the outer on the Rush Stand wing, the old girl looked like a quaint English fairground, like the ones in the closing scenes of the movie ‘Babe’

Most impressive of all was a huge banner along the fence which read, ” Collingwood domination; envy of the nation”.

Bucks and Harvey and Rocca were early track arrives and were in earnest discussion with Geoff Walsh. Pendlebury blew the chance to push his leadership credentials when he arrived on the ground with a skinny latte for Walsh, a mocca for himself and nothing for Bucks. A rare error by the brilliant number ten! ( in truth, the captaincy was announced to the team on Thursday night with Maxy in the top job and Bally and Pendles as vice-captains).

Grundy and Mooney looked ‘grungy’ with their black hoodies but both looked at ease in their movements. Broomhead and Kyle Martin rounded out a quartet of young Magpies getting a feel for the sacred turf.

Q stick and Fasolo led the team out to polite applause at around 8-30; the majority of the group did standard warm-up stuff at the Yarra Falls end, not far from where Barry Mitchell got that charity free all those years ago.

Meanwhile, Grundy, Witts, Daisy, and Josh T drilled the footy at each other from about five metres. Importantly, Daisy looked far less proppy and kick on his preferred right foot with no obvious signs of discomfort.
Next to these lads, Tapping and Hahn drilled the ball at Ramsay and Sinclair from close range. Their sure hands were great to see.

The ‘rehab’ drill group broke into fours and their drill was for one of them to stand in the middle of the triangle to try to interrupt the handball sequence of the other three players. Keefe, with his right knee lightly strapped, and Ramsay, Daisy and Kyle Martin made one group. Witts, Grundy, Josh T and Sinclair made the other. The workout was intense, and these eight boys were eventually joined by the pocket-rocket Ball. Ball has clearly returned to training in mint condition. Looks very sharp and almost ready to roll.

At this point, Gault and Nathan Brown began their run-throughs on the Ryder Stand wing in front of the corpse of the old stand. One could almost imagine John Wren or Jock McHale leaping to their feet as two fine young players ran past.

Former ‘inmates’ of the rehab group, Goldy and Young, were conspicuous in their solid participation with the main group. We are blessed to have two such thumping kicks on our list.

There was a tremendous amount of freebies given out by club workers. One could get any variety of I-Pad covers with our club logo and new major sponsor Holden on them. Free apples were on offer (the fruit, not the technology) as were fixtures for the coming season. A public address announcement stated that an I-pod Touch had been lost. Good luck to the owner getting that back.

Fasolo, Josh Thomas and Paine were seen having a gentle kick to kick in the pocket where Craig Kelly became an orthodontist against Sydney one day.

The main attraction for The Lad on the Family Day training was the match simulation. The ‘game’ was umpired by McInerney and some other AFL spud, and featured a number of match simulations.

In the write up below, you will see that many players had a number of match-ups.

The Orange team was arguably the A team of mids and forwards ( of those available) and the grey team were the beat available backs.
Jolly versus Hudson- Jolls dominated mostly but Hudson was adequate.
Didak v Marley – the veteran was conspicuous by his second and third efforts, Marley put him under the pump.
Pendles v Blair- Pendles was great and Blair got plenty of it too.
Seedsman v Swan- Seedsman was excellent, demanding the ball and working hard to get it. Swan was workmanlike.

In defence, Frost played against Ben Richmond and Yagmoor played on Broomhead.

Cloke versus Reid ( then Maxwell) 50/50 in the former, Cloke way too strong for Maxy.
Elliott v Shaw. Elliott gathered plenty of it but was hurt by Shaw on the rebound.
Q-Stick versus Maxy. Neither had much affect but Q-Stick made plenty of room for Clokey.

Krakouer v Johnno- Johnno ran off at every opportunity, but the brilliant Krakouer punished him every time he was loose.

Mooney v Johnno- Johnno was too experienced for the young Irishman, but Mooney is much improved in his footy smarts and has worked really hard on the foot skills which were poor last year.

I was extremely impressed by the work of Clinton Young, who, by all reports, will be joined by Buddy at Collingwood next year (Lols). Young has clearly been given a license to go long and direct and Cloke was the beneficiary of his clinical delivery.

Seedsman was terrific and has the confidence now to demand the football vociferously in a manner he previously did not.

Jack Frost had a spell on Cloke and was far from disgraced. As a mature age recruit, he has the body shape to compete at this level as at least a third defensive tall if needed.

McCaffer tagged Swan-dog at one stage and his fined down figure enables him to cover the ground a lot better.

Clokey is slimmer and back to the much more mobile model of a few years back- the mobile marking machine is back in town.

Yagmoor has built up physically and his disposal was much improved. Still could go a little harder at the contest.

After a period of time at 10-15, Young, Cloke, Marley and Reid called it a day.

Sidebottom continued to gather kicks at will and his head-to-head with Swan was very entertaining match up.

The players were very confident leading up when Broomhead ( who they call Stick) had the ball. His disposal and game sense is first rate.

A murmur went through the ground when Didak went down and got up hobbling. In the absence of trainers, he got up and eventually began to run ok. It appeared to be an ankle.

Cloke (knee) , Goldy, ( ankle) and Reid ( calf) returned to boundary line to support the boys. No issues with any of them, just the standard icing which mere mortals never get to see after the standard training run.

By the time I left, there would have been well over five thousand in the ground. The marquees were doing a roaring trade and the line at the membership tent was enormous- perhaps the dream of 80,000 members will come true in 2013!! No truth in the rumour that the last five thousand members signed up will be transferred to Melbourne as part of Demetrious socialist push.

Floret Pica.

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