Thursday’s session marked the return of a number of NRL players and the first sighting of a couple of new recruits.

Spotted today were Jack Williams, Harrison Edwards, Jaydn Su’A, Brian Kelly, Zion Johnson and Joash Papalii.

Any enjoyment from a day off on Wednesday would have been quickly forgotten as the Eels stormed straight back into the preseason load on Thursday.

For those on their first day, that involved the obligatory Broncos run to test their fitness levels. The feedback that I’ve had on this testing has been positive, because gone are the days of players not maintaining their conditioning during the off-season.

Jack Williams

Further to that, I think the message was delivered about the work ramping up a bit this preseason. There were enough hints at the KTM awards night let alone any direct messaging delivered by the coach after the last round capitulation.

That Broncos run marked what was essentially a split squad for the session as the new arrivals caught up on the work that had been completed during week one.

Rather than listing off what had been done before, I’ll keep this report as succinct as possible by identifying new drills.

Jaydn Su’A

The tackle contact target was a new drill that I hadn’t seen in all of my years of reporting on Eels training. It wasn’t so much about having a contact target. That’s been done before. It was purely a completely different methodology that was simple but effective. (I won’t describe it as the coaches have their “patented” methods that should stay with their sessions)

This was paired with continued defence line movement and aggressive contact.

Draw and pass grids and passing with shape led into full field games of touch football with kicking on the fourth tackle. The continued chase and getting back onside after the kick ensured the conditioning component in a footy drill.

Contact – Papalii and Simonsson

The squad then split into forwards and backs. The forwards ran shapes through the middle and out to the edges. The backs worked on getting into support positions and shape on the back of fielding kicks.

It was difficult to assess many of the individual performances in this session as most of the work was undertaken on the furthest reaches of the fields.

Then there was the matter of the news about the Foxx breaking half way through the session. My phone went into meltdown as I was trying to take notes and all of us watching the session tried to make sense of the breaking headlines.

What was evident was the catch up for the established NRL players, the position specific skills, a ramped up defensive attitude, and continued pushing on the fitness front.

Eels forever!

Sixties

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