Callan Ward steps up work as GWS Giants coach Leon Cameron relishes a healthy list of players
GWS coach Leon Cameron is in an unusual position — almost all his star players are fit and healthy, and Callan Ward is about to take a major step in his comeback from a knee injury.
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Callan Ward is poised to begin light football drills in a major boost for the Giants as coach Leon Cameron makes the most of the healthiest pre-season list he can remember.
The midfielder will come into selection discussions in the opening weeks of the season with Cameron hopeful “rounds 1, 2 or 3” will see the 29-year-old’s return to action.
Ward suffered a ruptured ACL in his left knee in Round 4 last season but has been diligently clocking up the kilometres on the track and in the gym ahead of resuming football training.
The coming days will see Ward take a significant step forward, while the club’s other long-term injury victim, ruckman Matt Flynn (also ACL), is looking at a May return to action.
Of the 45 players available to him, the Giants coach believes he has had 39 or 40 hitting the track per session, taking into account rest days for both older and younger players and the odd niggle.
Cameron has everything crossed the healthy picture continues throughout the rest of January-February period, admitting that too many players have spent too long on the sidelines in the past few seasons.
Ward, Stephen Coniglio, Josh Kelly, Toby Greene and Lachie Whitfield were among those to miss games last season through injury.
“I’m not shying away from the fact we’ve had too many injuries the last three years,” Cameron told The Daily Telegraph.
“Probably a lot of that is through bad luck but there would have been some (player) management issues as well. We understand that. We’ve got to manage some players a little bit better but we don’t put our heads in the sand and say we haven’t contributed to this.
“We constantly look at our training programs, our weights, our on-field recovery protocols and all that sort of stuff and we feel as though we’ve got a lot of that right, but if it was exactly right then probably we would have the availability of some more players.
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“The challenge is to get it exactly right. Do we need a little bit of luck? Absolutely, as there’s been some nasty ankle and knee injuries, which hasn’t helped.
“I’m confident the January-February period will be a really strong one that ultimately holds you in good stead in the season proper.
“Our January-February in the last couple of years has been pretty good but we want it to be really good. By pretty good it might mean that 30-odd players have had really good pre-seasons, but we want 40 to have really good pre-seasons so that when some things do happen you’ve got lots of players to call on and not players that might have missed pre-season because they’ve been injured.
“Out of our 45, most times we’ve 39 to 40 out there. If I’m saying (at the end of pre-season) that I’ve had 40 out there regularly during January and February then it means you’ve ticked a lot of boxes.”
The need to get more players clocking up more minutes has also been noted outside the club.
Speaking on radio station SEN recently, St Kilda great Nick Dal Santo said it was a case at GWS of: “Too many really, really good players not playing enough football together.”