Friday. The end of week one of Eels preseason training.

The first item on the reporting agenda is the return of Tallyn Da Silva. I’ve been inundated by messages about the former Tiger, and given that the Eels currently only have two dummy halves in their senior squad, it’s understandable that they are keen to see him start his first preseason with the club.

Given that Ryles has shown his hand and used both Ryley Smith and Tallyn Da Silva in his 17, there is a question mark over who will be the NSW Cup dummy half. Will the club fast track Lachie Coinakis? Will they use a NSWRL contracted player in that position? Will they look at converting a specialist player from another position into a utility role?

As Tallyn took the field today he told me that his first day back was Wednesday. There was no field work scheduled on that day so I wasn’t on site to see that.

Thursday came and went without seeing him out there but he was in the thick of the skills work today, though not the heavy contact activities.

Speaking of contact, that brings us to the next item on the report agenda. Defence! The session concluded with most of the players donning match day jerseys for tackling practise.

I was trying to look for whether specific players hit a bit harder than others and to be fair, they were all responsible for creating the sounds of impact – be it the collision into a body or a pad or the noise of air escaping the lungs!

This was all about the individual technique. Hit, drive, take down, one on one. It started with one on one hitting an opponent and his bump pad, then driving them backwards. From there, the tackle was made without the cushioning of a bump pad, with the tackled player taken down onto gym mats.

Finally, the ultimate defensive drill involved being placed into groups of four, with one player charged with tackling all of the others in a random order determined by Sam Moa. There was most definitely a conditioning component in this final task.

Earlier in the morning the stage had been set for a defence focussed session.

There was a range of defence drills, much of which still involved ball movement, and with the tacklers focussed on their positioning and their foot movement.

The outside backs also dedicated time to defending high kicks.

That’s not to say that there wasn’t any attacking footy. There was an element of consolidation of skills and systems in that regard. Unstructured footy within limited space, be it three on two or similar advantaged numbering, has been a feature of the week.

Similarly, Nathan Brown has overseen the young players learning attacking shapes through the ruck or on the edge, with support runners taking different lines and the ball players choosing who to hit with the pass.

Lachy Coinakis is benefitting from the time spent with Nathan Brown

Other basic shapes off the ruck into contact and then the play the ball seemed to be more about learning the systems and developing the speed of the play – that aspect of Parra’s footy should be familiar to all supporters and this preseason will probably be all about doubling down on that and adding to their options.

There have been opposed drills this week where it appears that the focus might be specifically either attack or defence, with Sam Moa or Jason Ryles organising or leading the defensive stuff or Scott Wisemantel or Nathan Brown likewise looking after attack. However, like the game itself, there are two sides to the game, and whilst a drill is being led by Ryles and Moa, Brown and Wisemantel could be looking what the players are doing with the ball in hand, or in their offensive positioning. The beauty is found in the eye of each coach.

Outside of today’s drills there was an element of traditional conditioning, with players repeating runs over a specific distance, with some on slightly different distances according to positions played. That said, it was a minimal component of the session.

Sam Tuivaiti

I will begin to offer opinions about different players each week. The observations might be relatively superficial or they might be about something for fans to watch out for. Regardless, the goal is to get to know some of the younger players.

Today, I wanted to make a comparison between the size of players in specific positions. At one stage Sam Tuivaiti and Ryda Talagi were running alongside each other which made this possible.

With a first grade debut under his belt, Sam has his age, height and weight listed on the Eels official site. At 20 years of age he’s 191cm and 117kg, though I reckon he could be taller than 6ft 3 in the old imperial system.

Ryda with Joash and Apa

By comparison, Ryda has only played five NSW Cup games after rising from SG Ball last season and is just 18 years of age. This means there are no listed stats for him on the Eels official site. However, he might already be a shade bigger than Sam. Photos on Eels media over coming weeks might help fans to judge that.

The other prop that I wanted to throw into the comparison is Teancum Brown. Big Tee has just one NSW Cup game under his belt after being an important mainstay of the Eels Flegg team over the last two seasons. Similar to Ryda, there are no height or weight stats on the official squad listing.

I reckon Brown might be close to a similar height and weight to both Sam and Ryda, though I didn’t have as many opportunities to observe him side by side with them. All three appear to be tall props.

Week one done!

Eels forever!

Sixties!

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