Don’t blink!

If by chance you do, there’s every chance you’ll miss this pre-season.

The comparative brevity of this pre-Christmas period is exemplified by how few weeks are available for NRL clubs prior to the festive break. With week one now out of the way, only two weeks remain before the players get their annual fortnight break. Players who’ve had five or more pre-seasons only have to front for one week before they get their time off.

Of course all of the above refers to Parra’s time line. For the grand final clubs, I’d expect that their younger players would be back one week before Christmas and their senior players wouldn’t be seen until early January.

Back on the Eels front, the conditioning load picked up a bit with two days recovery (the weekend) to look forward to.

Here’s how today’s session went down:

Conditioning

After about 25 minutes of warm ups, the squad embarked on their first two kilometres of the day.

This was broken into the familiar sequence of 800m, 600m, 400m and 200m runs. A short period of rest broke up each of those runs, but there was a catch. Those who finished each run in good time received the longest break. The further any stragglers fell behind the group, the further they ate into their own rest times.

Mr 3:16 Ray Stone

Those to shine during this work included Dylan Brown, Jake Arthur, Nathaniel Roache and Ray Stone. Big blokes like Oregon Kaufusi and Keegan Hipgrave also pushed up towards the leaders.

Now burdened with some level of fatigue, the squad was broken into two teams for a game of two handed sideline touch. In this game, after making a touch the defender has to sprint off the field and run around a sideline post before rejoining the game.

The ball movement is fast and the attacking team is encouraged to keep up the tempo of their play and to use the ball.

After about ten minutes play it was time to report back to Trent Elkin for the next two kilometres of running. And once again it was broken into the sequence of 800m, 600m, 400m and 200m.

Haze Dunster showcased his fitness during this period as he and Jake Arthur shared the first across the line spoils. Tom Opacic also pushed into the leading group, with much of that group remaining unchanged from the first 2km set.

What would have pleased Elkin and the coaches was the form of the new faces. The effort from these blokes in the first week of preseason would be exactly what the coaches were looking for. I’d also like to tip my hat to the big forwards, all of whom look to be responding to the competition for places in the pack this season. Of those, David Hollis deserves acknowledgement. The towering prop completed the previous preseason but was then out of the bubble when COVID struck. He’s obviously done the work to be ready for his elevation to the Top 30.

Back to the session, and more fatigue was naturally the precursor to another game of two handed sideline touch.

And how keen was the game?

Let’s just say that a particular player absolutely flattened Reed Mahoney when chasing him in defence. Though the collision was accidental it did appear that the player in question completed a penalty on the sideline after the incident.

By the way, Reed was fine.

Footy Time

The session  concluded with the left side players taking on right side players in sets of one or two tackles. This sort of footy is really Parra 101. Before the squad can begin to work on more complicated plays, they have to become very familiar with each other, their calls and the team’s standard patterns and shapes. In such basics, communication and line speed also features heavily.

Papali’i – photo credit NZ Herald

Though the attacking team put on some interesting plays, most of the emphasis seemed to be on defence, with feedback provided on decision making, positioning and movement.

Yet despite this focus, it was once again Isaiah Papali’i who caught my eye with the lines that he runs. It’s only training drills, but I like the questions his carries ask of the defence. Such questions are not only valuable when he receives the ball, but also in any decoy runs as the defence would be conscious of his impact. It will be interesting to watch his development and where he fits into the team as the preseason progresses.

After just on two hours the field work wrapped up and the squad moved inside to finish with some contact work in the gym.

With the first week under the belt, my top performers of the week across conditioning and skills components were Dylan Brown, Jake Arthur and Bryce Cartwright. The players to keep an eye on are Isaiah Papali’i and Nathaniel Roache. I’ll attempt to track Keegan Hipgrave and Tom Opacic more closely next week. They definitely pushed into the leading group with their conditioning.

Please note that my focus was primarily on the new faces this week. Also, I haven’t been mentioning the pathways players by name at this stage as I don’t want to put too much expectation on them in the first couple of weeks. The exception is Jake Arthur as he’s going to have to deal with the pressure and judgement from being BA’s son, and his elevation to a Development Contract had already been profiled in the media. It’s impossible for him to escape scrutiny, but he’s been around the traps for a while and he’s started his first preseason as you’d expect.

I am taking note of the how the younger brigade are training and will retrospectively report on their individual efforts shortly.

It’s all on again next week.

Eels forever!

Sixties

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