Sorry this report is a day late, but as 60’s indicated, we have had troubles with our hosting provider. Our usual viewers would have seen the site has been down for a couple of days. You probably also saw the fun we were all having on 1EE, where it was speculated that the TCT HQ was raided and the five of us were in gaol. Those mug shots were gold and closer to the truth than we would like, particularly Mitch – Bieber’s twin for sure.

Geoff joined me on Friday at training to see where the team are up to before they go into camp next week.

The highlight on Friday was BA doing all the physical work with the players. He is in amazing shape, and even showed up about a dozen or so of the players. Don’t worry – this is not a reflection of those players – its indicative of the fitness and tenacity of our coach. Being a hands on coach, he was running in a group and placing his boot where it needed to go in between strides. He was even doing the up and down off the ground drills that you can see on the club site for week four. There’s something that can be gained by the players when they have a coach who doesnt ask them to do something that he couldnt do himself. Impressive stuff.

In previous reports I have spoken about the high intensity and high pressure sessions where game day situations are replicated to get the players used to key decision making. You can see in this photo an example of the tight, at the line passing that is being rehearsed. Matagi, onto Pritchard who runs into Joseph Ualesi, Cody Nelson and Michael Doolan. Akafolua and Schulte did some good things and Dargan spent some time running the show for his team.

After a heap of running, there was some key attacking drills, focused on moves inside the 20. This session was refereed by Alan Shortall and other referee I didn’t recognise (sorry). We saw our first penalty blown of the year! I haven’t missed that whistle that’s for sure. The three groups of players appear to be getting together in something closer to a potential first 13 and two mixtures of possibles and 20’s players. There were some sweet attacking movements with a large number of tries scored.

Tepai looked very good today, trained strong and scored a good try off some excellent ball work by the halves. He looks like he is ready for a huge year. Kaysa looks sharp out of dummy half. Nathan Brown and Dan Alvaro were both strong, Tim Mannah led the talking and Bevan had some nice touches. Ken Edwards was also prominent.

As per the introduction to this report, the team will be away for most of next week. You may recall the pictures and video of last year’s camp on the Central Coast, more like a torture test of mind and body. TCT will not be making the trip to watch the sand hills – it’s too painful to watch!

Go the Eels!!!!

Chris.

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