Hi Power fans,

The second day of our camp seemed to arrive in the blink of an eye for it only seemed like my head had just hit the pillow from the previous night before my alarm was sounding today at 7.00am.

It was fair to say that as a playing group we were totally exhausted last night after a massive first day that included a 13 hour flight, a couple of hours sleep and long day of training.

The long sleep was great for my recovery and I woke refreshed and ready to go for our second day.

After a team breakfast we boarded our bus at 8.30am for the 30 minute ride to Dubai Sports City. Along the way I tried to observe as much about the city of Dubai as possible. A couple of things really stood out for me. Firstly, the locals are incredibly patriotic with most buildings and homes, and even some cars, adorned with the United Arab Emirates flag. The second thing that stood out for me is how much unfinished construction there is. It is an incredibly modern city with some magnificent structures but there are also many unfinished buildings that have been left uncompleted.

On arrival at the Dubai Sports City we prepared for training and had a team meeting led by Ken Hinkley. Ken’s main message was that as individuals and as a group, we have to make every second count both in football and in life. We have an opportunity to build towards something special at this club but it just won’t happen without plenty of hard work and being disciplined in doing all the little things really well. He reminded us of the gut-wrenching feeling after we lost to Geelong in the semi-final and encouraged us to remember that across pre-season as we strive to improve in all areas.

Despite some natural soreness from the previous day, we all hit the track with great enthusiasm. We started off with a yo-yo test (no not one of those fad toys from the 1980s but a running drill like a beep test) followed by an intense football exercise focussing on both our ball movement and defensive structures.

After the ball work, the running shoes were put on and we just did some running, then more running and then more running after that. It was a very gruelling session but everyone stuck together and helped each other get through. It was a really positive session with the boys working extremely hard and by this time we had earned a break for lunch.

After lunch Matthew Nicks held a team meeting based on team defence and the importance of having strong defensive structures. Our team improved significantly in this area last season but we still have a lot of work to go to match the best defensive teams in the competition like Fremantle. Across the pre-season our focus will be to continue becoming as best defensively as we can.

Following the meeting the team broke into three groups – the midfielders, forwards and defenders – and spent the remainder of the afternoon rotating between running drills, gym work and specialised skill work. Again all these sessions were incredibly demanding and it all added up to one of the toughest pre-season days I’ve ever had.

Besides dominating the running sessions again, the highlight of the day for Kane Cornes was when he met his cricketing hero, former Pakistan all-rounder Mudassar Nazar. Kane, who is a massive cricket fan and played a bit when he was younger, bumped into Mudassar as he was leaving the gym in the ICC indoor cricket academy. It turns out Mudassar is a coach at the academy and he was more than willing to pose for a photo with his number one fan. The rest of us have never heard of Mudassar but Kane assures us he was an outstanding all-rounder for Pakistan in the 1980s and may have even claimed a few man-of-the-match trophies in some Benson and Hedges World Series Cup games in Australia.

Training finished just after 4pm and the team jumped on the bus and headed back to the hotel for a recovery session in the pool followed by dinner and hopefully another good night’s sleep.

As a group we are already looking forward to tomorrow when we get to meet our four new draftees – Jarman Impey, Mitch Harvey, Darcy Byrne-Jones and Karl Amon – who were recruited at last week’s AFL National Draft. I just hope they brought their running shoes!

Cheers
Jasper