LostDoggy
30-10-2007, 12:24 AM
Pre-season snapshot – Western Bulldogs
6:34 PM Mon 29 October, 2007 | Back
By Jennifer Witham
Exclusive to AFL BigPond Network
News
New arrivals
Players - Tim Callan (Geelong), Ben Hudson (Adelaide).
Coaches – Brad Gotch (Collingwood), Peter Dean (Murray Bushrangers).
Delisted
Cameron Faulkner, Travis Baird, Tim Walsh, Damian McCormack, Marty Pask, Michael West.
Retired
Luke Darcy, Chris Grant, Matthew Robbins, Brett Montgomery.
Traded
Jordan McMahon, Sam Power.
What I did on my holiday
Two Bulldogs became heroes during the off-season, with Daniel Cross and Tom Williams leaping into Hong Kong's Victoria Harbour to save a woman from drowning.
The two players swam to the woman – who is believed to have been attempting suicide – and dragged her to shore, with both suffering minor cuts and bruises.
"We noticed someone jumping in but to be honest we thought it was just one of the local fishermen. Then we realised something was wrong and just jumped in," Williams said, on westernbulldogs.com.au.
"We had to swim 10 kilometres to get her out and fight several sharks off at the same time ... no really it was just 200 metres"
The players were on an unofficial team trip at the time of the incident, and were waiting to board a cruise boat when they heard shouts from bystanders.
Cross was later awarded with a new mobile phone from Telstra as a result of his brave act, after the incident left his old one water-logged and unusable.
"They were heroes, weren't they? I think those things are instinctive and obviously they did a very good thing to save the young girl's life," coach Rodney Eade said.
"It was an interesting experience for them. It certainly shows the calibre of the two guys involved."
Pre-season training starts…
It already has for some. Around 20 members of the Dogs' list hit the track recently, with the more senior players set to resume in early November.
The group currently training will get a break in six weeks time, before earning a week off. They'll then face another three-week block of training before breaking for a fortnight over Christmas.
Pre-season plans
The Bulldogs will head off on a training camp later in the year, once the entire list is back training.
"We're planning something at the moment, it's not finalised yet, but we will be going somewhere pre-Christmas," head of physical performance Cameron Falloon said.
"That will be a focus not just on the physical side of the training, the running and the weights etc, but a lot of leadership stuff as well.
"It will be about team building, and getting the younger guys to have a bit more of a voice, and to step up and not just run great times in time trials, but to have a voice and a say in where they want to go."
All up, the focus for the Dogs this year is to have a staggered but lengthy pre-season, with the objective of "getting more miles in the legs earlier" but "breaking up their pre-season to mentally as much as physically freshen them up".
What the fitness guy says
"There's a lot of different things we're doing. We're taking a much more individualised approach to their training," Falloon said.
"It's a lot of hard work, but already I've seen massive improvements in the guys since they've come back, so we're really pleased that the hard work the coaching staff and the conditioning staff have put into planning their program is already paying off.
"We're gradually building every week, and we're got a plan basically for the first six weeks of just incrementally building their training loads in weights, running and skills.
"Next week will be a bigger volume week again, and the week after bigger again, and so on until the sixth week before they go away and have a short break."
What the coaching staff says
"Our list isn't too bad, actually [injury wise]. Wayde Skipper's got a fractured foot, so he's still a couple of months away," Eade said.
"Tom Williams had a clean-up on his ankle and he'll be joining the main group next Monday.
"Ryan Griffen just had a bit of pain in his patella tendon, which was just due to the operation where his thigh wasted a bit, so we've just got to build up the strength there, so he's probably only a week or two away from being 100 per cent to join in.
"Shaun Higgins had a shoulder operation and it was probably a good decision that we did it two or three weeks earlier than if we'd waited until the end of the season, and now he's been able to do all the running, so he's in pretty good shape.
"We found last year that quite a few guys had an interrupted pre-season, or didn't have much of one, and we believe that hurt us towards the end of the season.
"We need to have a really strong base, and getting them back early allows us to get them fitter a bit earlier so we can work on some game style, and some footy stuff earlier rather than wait until January."
6:34 PM Mon 29 October, 2007 | Back
By Jennifer Witham
Exclusive to AFL BigPond Network
News
New arrivals
Players - Tim Callan (Geelong), Ben Hudson (Adelaide).
Coaches – Brad Gotch (Collingwood), Peter Dean (Murray Bushrangers).
Delisted
Cameron Faulkner, Travis Baird, Tim Walsh, Damian McCormack, Marty Pask, Michael West.
Retired
Luke Darcy, Chris Grant, Matthew Robbins, Brett Montgomery.
Traded
Jordan McMahon, Sam Power.
What I did on my holiday
Two Bulldogs became heroes during the off-season, with Daniel Cross and Tom Williams leaping into Hong Kong's Victoria Harbour to save a woman from drowning.
The two players swam to the woman – who is believed to have been attempting suicide – and dragged her to shore, with both suffering minor cuts and bruises.
"We noticed someone jumping in but to be honest we thought it was just one of the local fishermen. Then we realised something was wrong and just jumped in," Williams said, on westernbulldogs.com.au.
"We had to swim 10 kilometres to get her out and fight several sharks off at the same time ... no really it was just 200 metres"
The players were on an unofficial team trip at the time of the incident, and were waiting to board a cruise boat when they heard shouts from bystanders.
Cross was later awarded with a new mobile phone from Telstra as a result of his brave act, after the incident left his old one water-logged and unusable.
"They were heroes, weren't they? I think those things are instinctive and obviously they did a very good thing to save the young girl's life," coach Rodney Eade said.
"It was an interesting experience for them. It certainly shows the calibre of the two guys involved."
Pre-season training starts…
It already has for some. Around 20 members of the Dogs' list hit the track recently, with the more senior players set to resume in early November.
The group currently training will get a break in six weeks time, before earning a week off. They'll then face another three-week block of training before breaking for a fortnight over Christmas.
Pre-season plans
The Bulldogs will head off on a training camp later in the year, once the entire list is back training.
"We're planning something at the moment, it's not finalised yet, but we will be going somewhere pre-Christmas," head of physical performance Cameron Falloon said.
"That will be a focus not just on the physical side of the training, the running and the weights etc, but a lot of leadership stuff as well.
"It will be about team building, and getting the younger guys to have a bit more of a voice, and to step up and not just run great times in time trials, but to have a voice and a say in where they want to go."
All up, the focus for the Dogs this year is to have a staggered but lengthy pre-season, with the objective of "getting more miles in the legs earlier" but "breaking up their pre-season to mentally as much as physically freshen them up".
What the fitness guy says
"There's a lot of different things we're doing. We're taking a much more individualised approach to their training," Falloon said.
"It's a lot of hard work, but already I've seen massive improvements in the guys since they've come back, so we're really pleased that the hard work the coaching staff and the conditioning staff have put into planning their program is already paying off.
"We're gradually building every week, and we're got a plan basically for the first six weeks of just incrementally building their training loads in weights, running and skills.
"Next week will be a bigger volume week again, and the week after bigger again, and so on until the sixth week before they go away and have a short break."
What the coaching staff says
"Our list isn't too bad, actually [injury wise]. Wayde Skipper's got a fractured foot, so he's still a couple of months away," Eade said.
"Tom Williams had a clean-up on his ankle and he'll be joining the main group next Monday.
"Ryan Griffen just had a bit of pain in his patella tendon, which was just due to the operation where his thigh wasted a bit, so we've just got to build up the strength there, so he's probably only a week or two away from being 100 per cent to join in.
"Shaun Higgins had a shoulder operation and it was probably a good decision that we did it two or three weeks earlier than if we'd waited until the end of the season, and now he's been able to do all the running, so he's in pretty good shape.
"We found last year that quite a few guys had an interrupted pre-season, or didn't have much of one, and we believe that hurt us towards the end of the season.
"We need to have a really strong base, and getting them back early allows us to get them fitter a bit earlier so we can work on some game style, and some footy stuff earlier rather than wait until January."