Training 2025 Pre Season Thread

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I don't think he was overhyped, just that he was doing well enough in pre-season to be picked in R1 on merit, which proved to be the case.

He would have played far more games in a team with shallower inside midfielder depth, or weaker generally, or if we were managing his workloads.
Sanders started off reasonably well too. 20 touches and 5 tackles per game for your first month of footy is excellent production.

He was then made sub which clearly dented his confidence. Was then in and out of the team over the remainder of the year and didn't really find much continuity at AFL level.
 

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Maybe not exactly, but pretty close.

I would say that's hype, but not necessarily overhype

Also, the fact that he was the best first-year player in Bevo's time also wasn't that surprising, considering the only two earlier draft picks we have had in Bevo's time were Jamarra and Darcy, both key position players. It can be both true that Bevo thought that, and not necessarily over-hyping him any more than what you'd expect for a typical top 10 draft pick midfielder who has a a January birthday. It's just that Bevo's not exactly had a conveyer belt of those types of draft picks come through in his 10 years.
 
I would say that's hype, but not necessarily overhype

Also, the fact that he was the best first-year player in Bevo's time also wasn't that surprising, considering the only two earlier draft picks we have had in Bevo's time were Jamarra and Darcy, both key position players. It can be both true that Bevo thought that, and not necessarily over-hyping him any more than what you'd expect for a typical top 10 draft pick midfielder who has a a January birthday. It's just that Bevo's not exactly had a conveyer belt of those types of draft picks come through in his 10 years.

Smith was very good in his first year so might be the best comparison, but in his first pre-season he was coming off injury and almost a year younger than Sanders was in his first pre-season, both of which would make Sanders look like the more AFL-ready prospect.
 
Sanders was already part of our centre bounce rotation when he was getting games in the back end of the year, too. He was playing games with Garcia, and attending more CB's than Garcia (splitting hairs but technically Sanders was already preferred as the 5th most CBA player with Garcia the 6th). By the end of the season we squeezed the rotation and gave more to the main 4 guys plus threw Gallagher in there as cover a few times, but even Gallagher as the 5th option in the last 2 H&A and the finals games was attending fewer than Garcia as the 6th option in the 3 games Garcia played before that.

Sanders was still a 30% attendee, but it's not a huge step up from there to the 50% or whatever we might even consider a midfielder first - indeed with 75% TOG or whatever if he attends 40+% he's going to be attending more than not when he's on the ground, which is the tipping point people probably want to see. It's literally only 3 or 4 more attendances a game.
 
Foxman is right. He was overhyped.

Or hopefully it's less that he was overhyped and more that his 2024 season didn't live up to what Bevo had seen and Bevo's subsequent hype. I prefer that scenario because it would suggest he has another level which none of us have seen yet. Fingers crossed we may see it 2025.

We can make tenuous points regarding the semantics of Bevo's words but if you are fairly media savvy (as Bevo surely should be by now) and you say this (as quoted in the link):
"In a significant way, he's well ahead of any first-year players that I've ever seen come through our football club," Beveridge said on Tuesday.

Then you know how the media will react, you know how high the expectations will become and you know which bits of it the fans will remember.

Of course we could argue about what exactly he meant by "well ahead of". Well ahead in terms of talent? Well ahead in terms of physical development? Well ahead in fitness? Or did he just mean more precocious (meaning he's likely to come back to the field over the next season or two)?

Whatever it was he was trying to convey, if after nine years as a senior coach Bevo didn't actually mean to set those expectations and get those reactions then he's a much slower learner and less skilled with the media than I had thought. Or maybe he was just providing some distraction from himself (a coach with question marks) or some cover for Sam Power (questionable trading away of our future first to move up the draft order ... yeah, yeah, I know ... Jordan Croft and all that, blah blah).
 
Excited to see a more dynamic Sanders in 2025. He has it in him to be more damaging and I think after another pre-season we’ll see a more confident player. Which he’ll only continue to grow from.

I’m just hoping Kennedy doesn’t take too many midfield minutes off him.
 
But SB is one of the best ITK posters!

You may be the messenger, but the message is incorrect. He has missed a number of sessions, but has trained on several occassions this month, including Wednesday (solo on Whitten Oval) and today. I have spoken with him personally this week and he is doing extra boxing sessions and said he is feeling strong.
 

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The WOOF mods and posters prefer the writeups in the members-only sections to not get copied over elsewhere, they put a lot of work into them.

Just say it's behind a quasi paywall. Can't have access to it unless you're a member and you can only be a member of you keep posting/contributing. No lazy supporters allowed. 😁
 
Just say it's behind a quasi paywall. Can't have access to it unless you're a member and you can only be a member of you keep posting/contributing. No lazy supporters allowed. 😁

I was a lazy supporter and lost my access. :oops:
 
Just say it's behind a quasi paywall. Can't have access to it unless you're a member and you can only be a member of you keep posting/contributing. No lazy supporters allowed. 😁
Not all of us have time to spent scrolling forums and posting incessantly. I pay over 500 a year for my membership, so any fully paid up member is hardly lazy.
 
Sanders was already part of our centre bounce rotation when he was getting games in the back end of the year, too. He was playing games with Garcia, and attending more CB's than Garcia (splitting hairs but technically Sanders was already preferred as the 5th most CBA player with Garcia the 6th). By the end of the season we squeezed the rotation and gave more to the main 4 guys plus threw Gallagher in there as cover a few times, but even Gallagher as the 5th option in the last 2 H&A and the finals games was attending fewer than Garcia as the 6th option in the 3 games Garcia played before that.

Sanders was still a 30% attendee, but it's not a huge step up from there to the 50% or whatever we might even consider a midfielder first - indeed with 75% TOG or whatever if he attends 40+% he's going to be attending more than not when he's on the ground, which is the tipping point people probably want to see. It's literally only 3 or 4 more attendances a game.
You think fewer games as sub would have an impact on that 30% figure.
There's every chance he climbs the pecking order as the year wears on and actually starts in the centre in late round games. His late season VFL form was just ridiculous
 
Not all of us have time to spent scrolling forums and posting incessantly. I pay over 500 a year for my membership, so any fully paid up member is hardly lazy.
You don't have to be glued to WOOF to get access to the training reports folks. The moderators just encourage participation across the forum and ask people not to copy the more in depth information that is posted. If your only contribution is to sign up, be a fly on the wall and copy paste the posts elsewhere you'll rightly be removed. Also, if you're here posting about "not having enough time to post" you definitely have enough time to post in WOOF once or twice every couple of days and that would likely give you access to the training forums. Just at a glance, you have liked / commented in BF 11 times since Monday, which would put you as one of the more prolific WOOF posters ironically.

In the meantime, the only other way around it is to have a regular BF poster start to attend training and post their summaries.
 
And never play them on the Gold Coast? At least Ballarat isn’t far from Marvel….its in the same state at least
Was more thinking how we never play the Perth teams there or the Swans, and won't be playing Brissy there while they are a perennial top 4 side, so that leaves the Adelaide teams, GWS and the Suns. Tassie will be a lock too once they join if we are still playing there.
 
You don't have to be glued to WOOF to get access to the training reports folks. The moderators just encourage participation across the forum and ask people not to copy the more in depth information that is posted. If your only contribution is to sign up, be a fly on the wall and copy paste the posts elsewhere you'll rightly be removed. Also, if you're here posting about "not having enough time to post" you definitely have enough time to post in WOOF once or twice every couple of days and that would likely give you access to the training forums. Just at a glance, you have liked / commented in BF 11 times since Monday, which would put you as one of the more prolific WOOF posters ironically.

In the meantime, the only other way around it is to have a regular BF poster start to attend training and post their summaries.
It just comes across as a bit off-putting. We are all supporting the same team, I don't know why the need to restrict info. Anyway, it is what it is. I joined up to Woof, but have not posted enough and so lost access. Regained access and again didn't have the time to post. So I have given up.
Sure, this week I have been on here a bit more than usual. But that is not always the way for me.
 
It just comes across as a bit off-putting. We are all supporting the same team, I don't know why the need to restrict info. Anyway, it is what it is. I joined up to Woof, but have not posted enough and so lost access. Regained access and again didn't have the time to post. So I have given up.
Sure, this week I have been on here a bit more than usual. But that is not always the way for me.
I made a bit of an attempt posting there last pre season but just got zero engagement on any questions or opinions compared to here so then didn’t see the point. Just seemed a bit like the same small-medium group only replying to each other.

The training reports are great so it’s a bit annoying to not have them, but it’s their platform so fair play to moderate how they see fit.
 
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Training 2025 Pre Season Thread

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