Adelaide and Port Adelaide players reported for pre-season training this week, the best time of the football year | Cornes

The disappointment of his late ex-coach after declining an early pre-season session still weighs on Graham Cornes, and now he’s imploring new era players to put the work in now.

Adelaide and Port Adelaide players reported for pre-season training this week. Well, some of them did. The older players get a reprieve and will wander in over the coming weeks.

It was the first to fourth-year players who had to front up this week. Imagine the excitement and the nervousness of the new draftees. For some it will be the start of a long, productive career. For others unfortunately, it will be over before it starts, such is the ruthlessness of AFL football.

Crows Training at West Lakes - Recruit Alex Neal-Bullen, number 28, leads his running group in a time trial. Picture: Dean Martin

Pre-season! It’s the best time of the football year. The weather is great, the mateship, unencumbered by external expectations, is special. The only pressure is that of performance against the clock, or the barbell.

However, it’s not all fun and games. It’s a time that the coaches must spend working on the team’s shortcomings. For the Crows, that means skill, skill and more skill.

Turnovers impacted on the Crows more than anything last season. Plus they must find a way to convert hit-outs to clearances.

There’s also the psychological component of the game that the Crows have to address. Last year, the assumption that they would make the eight seeped into the collective subconscious of the team. There can be no such complacency leading into season 2025.

Hopefully that is something that Matthew Nicks can learn on his Harvard Business School study tour. It will be fascinating to speak with him when he returns. One has to marvel at where this game of football can take you.

It is true that at this time of the year, many players impress but Adelaide’s high performance team is delighted with the presence and the running power of the three new players, Alex Neale-Bullen, James Peatling and Isaac Cumming. Also keep a look out for last year’s draftee, running defender Oscar Ryan, who has made the coaching staff sit up and take notice.

Port Adelaide’s biggest task over summer is to construct a new forward line and improve their forward line entries. Actually, their ball movement right across the ground needs to improve, but it was poor forward line entries that hurt the Power badly last season.

Losing Dan Houston won’t help in that regard, but Kane Farrell is still there and he is one of the AFL’s best users of the football. Of the new draftees, small forward Joe Berry, full of youthful enthusiasm, has impressed and there definitely will be a spot for him in Port’s forward structure if his attitude is maintained.

Port will not hold a pre-season camp this year. Photo by Dylan Burns/AFL Photos via Getty Images

Interestingly the Power, like the Crows, is not having a pre-season camp this year. That’s not a bad thing. How many pre-season camps can you go on?

However, as has happened in previous years, several of the Port players are doing their own thing overseas. Jason Horne-Francis, Lachie Jones and Josh Sinn, accompanied by Port’s Head of Medical Services, Tim O’Leary, have travelled to the USA to explore the best technology and testing for soft tissue injury prevention at the University of Wisconsin.

Given how valuable JHF is and how important he is to Port’s chances, it’s a small investment to protect against hamstring injuries.

Travis Boak and Ryan Burton went to Los Angeles for a 10-day intensive training block with the connections that Boak has established in the years he has been going there. It’s almost a yearly ritual and one of the reasons that Boaky is still playing at the age of 36 after 371 games!

Pre-season training camps have taken many and varied forms over the years. Different trends develop over different eras.

More than 60 years ago, the legendary John Kennedy, Hawthorn’s first premiership coach, embraced the Spartan regimen of Percy Cerutty’s sand dune running at Portsea. Other clubs quickly followed suit.

But pre-season camps are rarely the same. Nevertheless, at the end of them all the common response is usually how good they have been for fitness and team building.

In Adelaide several SANFL teams used to make the yearly pre-season pilgrimage to Mt Breckan, the castle that sits on the hill overlooking Victor Harbor. Mt Breckan has been many things over the years. During World War 2 it was a flight training centre where the legendary Keith Miller trained to get his pilot’s wings.

Then it became a rehabilitation centre for amputees, before it was used as a convention centre. More recently it has been sold as a private residence and restored after several years of vandalism.

But in the early 1980’s it was a pre-season base for several SANFL teams. The benchmark was the time trial from Mt Breckan on the hill around Granite Island and back. The record was once held by Phil Carman, who was years ahead of his opponents (and his teammates) in terms of physical preparation.

I’ve been on many pre-season camps. From a rabbit-plague infested farm at Balranald on the Hay Plains to the foreshore of Pt Lincoln. The favourite of the old Glenelg players was a training camp to Fiji that new coach John Nichols had convinced the club’s vice-presidents to fund.

The ridiculously hot, humid weather made training during the day almost impossible. Consequently, most players returned home in worse condition than when they left. They had fun though and team-bonding benefitted.

In recent years AFL teams have been more professional and selective about their pre-season activities. The high-altitude training that Collingwood undertook under Mick Malthouse was beneficial, as were Port Adelaide’s trips to New Zealand.

Most admirable however were the adventures that Alastair Clarkson took his Hawthorn players on as they challenged the Kokoda Track. Ever competitive, they covered the 96km, torturous terrain in a ridiculously short time while living and absorbing the messages of courage, mateship, endurance and sacrifice, that adorn the Isurava Memorial.

One regret I do have as an ex-footballer is that I didn’t take pre-season seriously enough. In November of 1966, I was 18 and had completed a season playing for Central Whyalla in the Spencer Gulf Football League.

A new school teacher/coach with an infectious enthusiasm knocked on the door and suggested I come out and start football training. But it was cricket season and football was months away. Such a concept seemed ridiculous.

Leon Holme was one of the most enthusiastic, positive men I would ever meet. He was decades ahead of his time. His disappointment when I declined was palpable and he told me so.

He would later go on to coach Dean Lukin when he won his gold medal in at the Los Angeles Olympic Games and play an important role in the strength and conditioning of the early Crows teams. He knew then how important pre-season was.

Sadly, he has now passed. At least I got to say sorry.