“Our focus will be on getting all the little things right so, say, in the weights room we will make sure that every exercise we do, we do it in the right manner and in the right form required.
“It’s clearly going to be our pre-season focus, it’s what Stuart Cormack is about as a high performance coach, it’s what Matthew Knights is about as a head coach and we want to make it an ingrained part of our players’ behavior. We want them to pay real attention to detail in everything they do - that involves conditioning, skill, game learning, whatever they do.”
Pre-season kicks off with two days of testing and medical examinations starting on Wednesday, 5th November, before the hard-slog begins on Friday at Latrobe University.
“Stu (Cormack) got the team together five weeks ago to outline his and Matthew Knights’ expectations for their return and they have had programs to work on.
“We have a number of players coming back from injury so they have been on, and will remain on, adjusted programs during pre-season so if they can’t kick much, for example, they will focus on other things like game-learning and decision-making.”
Hamilton said the playing list is very enthusiastic about starting training and there have been many players coming into the gym during their break.
“They are raring to go,” he said.
“With such a young list we need to progress our young players in the area of strength and conditioning and we feel we have a terrific team on board in that area. I ran into people from another club recently and they were amazed with the people we have been able to attract and the expertise that we have been able to bring to the club.
“Stu Cormack is already heading up the department while our new physical preparation assistant, Denise Jennings, starts next week and she has excellent qualifications having worked with the Australian and Victorian Institutes of Sport.
“There is also Mark Cera who was with us last year but has had his position re-defined. He will still be involved in rehabilitation but will also work on our players sprinting and agility which is exciting for us. We have a new dietician starting next week and we also have a number of PHD and Honors students from the University of Ballarat working with the club on key areas of sports science.
“We are really pleased with our staffing personnel and we have no doubt that we have the expertise required to build up our players from a size and weight point of view, and plenty of work has also gone into the program to improve their conditioning and skills.”
