Football’s gain may have been athletics’ loss – that could be the case following Joel Reynolds’ performance in last weekend’s Rye Gift. Reynolds finished second in the 70m novice final and fifth in the 70m open final – an outstanding effort for a young man whose training is very much football focussed. Reynolds was one of seven Essendon players who ran at the Rye Gift meeting, the others being Sean Wellman, Matthew Lloyd, Cory McGrath, Darren Walsh, Jordan Bannister and Scott Howard.

Essendon fitness coach John Quinn said Reynolds’ form was excellent. “He is a classy athlete and I think it showed – he ran very well. All the players ran very well,” Quinn said. “They were really excited about competing on the day and that was half the reason we did it. It breaks up the pre-season a little bit and still has them doing the speed work that we do. The players were quite exhausted by the end of the day – there was a lot of running involved.”

Apart from Reynolds, other noteable performances on the day saw Scott Howard make the 70m novice final and Darren Walsh finish second in his heat of the 70m novice. Matthew Lloyd finished third in his heat of the 70m novice as did Joran Bannister. Cory McGrath finished fourth in his heat of the 70m novice and ran very well in the 400m as did Sean Wellman.

And while some Bombers took to the running track, another Essendon player took to the water. Ted Richards competed in Lorne’s annual Pier To Pub race in front of 20,000 spectators. Richards completed the 1.2km swim in 17 minutes and 46 seconds to finish 200th in a field of almost 500. He was just over six minutes behind the winner Nick Hinsley.

Photos of the players running at Rye on the weekend are in our pre-season photo gallery.