Lyon raising the bar for pre-season
Pre-season begins this Monday and new coach Ross Lyon has brought a new regime to the Fremantle Dockers.
Pre-season training officially begins this Monday 7 November for the club’s first to fourth year players, with fifth to seventh year players returning the week after.
Senior players, including Matthew Pavlich and Aaron Sandilands are due back on Monday 21 November.
Weber said although the players had been on leave, the club still expected them to come back at a level of preparedness where they could progress and get better.
“We want them at the gates and ready to go,” he said.
Starting with an address to the playing group just before Doig Medal night, Weber said that Lyon made it abundantly clear what he expected of the players and what they could expect from him.
“Ross has come in with a very clear understanding of what he wants and that’s driven the environment to another level,” Weber said.
“We expect more of ourselves and on that basis we’ll be working extremely hard over the pre-season towards being ready to prepare for finals football in a manner that Ross is accustomed to and sees as a requirement for us to move forward.”
The first order of business has been getting everyone’s bodies right following an injury-riddled 2011 season.
Formerly the national physical performance coach for the Australian Wallabies, Weber said he and his sports science team would be making adjustments to Freo’s pre-season regime under Lyon.
“The benchmark has shifted because of Ross’ expectations and what he’s experienced,” he said.
Weber said he’s already noticed quite a significant shift in mentality, with a number of players working hard at the club during their allotted leave period to be ready to go once pre-season begins.
Weber also gave an update on where some of the club’s injured stars were at currently:
Anthony Morabito - He should be running in the next couple of weeks.
David Mundy -He’ll be back in a couple of weeks and ready to go.
Matt de Boer -. He’s about 7-14 days away from unrestricted activity.
Garrick Ibbotson, Nick Lower and Nat Fyfe (shoulder surgeries) - All of them have good mobility in their shoulders now and are progressing quite nicely.
Matthew Pavlich -He’s up and running on his holiday and doing very well.
Michael Barlow - He’ll commence running in the next 14 days.
Hayden Ballantyne - He was running exceptionally well prior to going on leave. He’s had a break now and we’ll push him back in.
Aaron Sandilands - His toe is good. He was running before he went on leave.