The air’s still heavy with the smell of damp earth after Monday’s storm.
The sun thumps down.
Everything’s sweating.
Out on the track around twenty GC SUNS are putting in. It’s a heavy-duty skills session today. Players kick, chase, kick again. Tumbling Sherrins zig-zag their way up and back. It never stops. It’s exhausting to watch.
Trent McKenzie sends a bullet Rex Liddy’s way. Liddy snags it lace out in front of his nose. It’s an exceptional kick. For an short moment McKenzie, quite understandably, pauses in admiration.
“Come on! Let’s get there!” barks a shirtless Bluey McKenna, ten year’s retired, but still looking like he’s been chiseled out of a concrete block.
McKenzie does as he’s told. He dips his head and charges up field.
“That’s it, mate,” McKenna says. “Good work.”
An inaugural AFL Premiership season is only a few months away now. You can sense the urgency. Everything happens quicker. Less mistakes. More precise. Way, way more intense.
The complete playing squad won’t assemble for the first time until after the National Draft at the end of November. This group is made up of the early birds who the Football Department reckons will benefit from the extra work.
They look good.
Hayden Jolly’s hands are soft and his kicks just don’t miss. Brandon Matera’s left foot is a beauty. Karmichael Hunt may have shed a bit of weight but he’s still a bull among calves. Nathan Ablett, still no certainty of a spot on next year’s list, is toiling away gamely. The rest are a high-energy blur of flapping yellow and green training bibs and glistening limbs.
At the end of their individual bursts, they clutch at the hems of their shorts or cross their hands behind their heads and strain for air.
Eventually - almost mercifully - a blast of Ken Hinkley’s whistle brings a temporary end to things. Water is ferried out on a golf cart.
Next it’s defensive work. Newly appointed Assistant Coach Dean Solomon talks the player’s through the drill. McKenna chimes in. He talks about calmness and patience. “One little step forward at the wrong time and you’ve lost the advantage. So concentrate, boys. Concentrate!” he says.
Another whistle and they’re off once more. Yellows play greens. Yellows go first. The ball moves quickly. Slick passes flick this way and that. Targets lead up. Marks stick. The players are reading it well. The kids are less inclined to blaze away these days.
Hunt finds it in the centre. He explodes forward to beat one, slams on the breaks to beat another, then deftly offloads by hand to put Jolly in the clear. Soon after he gathers on a wing. He tilts his hips and swerves inboard. Defenders follow the ball and forget about the two men on Hunt’s outside. He moves it on to one of them. His team scores.
“Smarts. He’s got ‘em in spades,” says Johnny Smith, the club’s training volunteer. Smith trained a Stawell Gift winner not too long ago. He knows something about smarts.
McKenzie rifles off another tracer bullet. It finds the new kid, Joel Wilkinson.
Wilkinson lifts his eyes, senses daylight and goes. He’s lightning quick, but he wasn’t watching closely enough. Young veteran Michael Coad – now back in full training after a horrible rib injury earlier in the year - cuts the angle and easily mows down his prey.
Coad was languishing in the SANFL two years ago.
“He’s a ripper, Coady. An out-and-out gun,” says Smith. “What on earth were people thinkin’ not givin’ him a go?”
It’s a fair point.
A whistle blows.
Smith hits the pedal on the cart and wheels out the refreshments. The players huddle in the centre. Their heavy breathing is clearly audible from the boundary line.
The coaches talk about composure and trusting your teammates and reading the energy of the play so the team can time its effort.
The sun still thumps down. It’ll probably storm later.
There’s still half an hour to go.
