Hungry Geelong returns in good shape to start pre-season

Two budding star midfielders have turned up to Geelong’s pre-season ready to go and have impressed the coaches in the early days on track.

Brandan Parfitt and the Cats have jumped back into training.

Young midfielders Brandan Parfitt and Max Holmes have shown up to pre-season “really fit” as midfield mentor Shaun Grigg begins to piece together his onball puzzle for 2023.

Geelong’s midfield depth has gone to another level over the off-season, with Joel Selwood’s retirement the only out from this year’s premiership side.

Brandan Parfitt has been looking good on the track.

Players who didn’t face Sydney in the grand final demolition such as Holmes, Sam Menegola, Sam Simpson and Mitch Knevitt will be staking a claim to break into the Cats side next year, while new faces such as Jack Bowes, Tanner Bruhn and Jhye Clark are also eyeing engine room minutes.

Tanner Bruhn is one of many Cats pushing for midfield minutes. Picture: Alan Barber

Grigg, who largely leads the midfield as an assistant coach, faces a growing headache finding space in the onball rotation.

“It’s really exciting. The list management team and Andrew Mackie did a good job bringing in some really good players, as a coaching group we are pretty blessed with a list that those guys have been able to put together,” he said.

“For us at the moment it is really about getting to know those (new) guys and what their strengths are and how they can compliment our system.

“We want to see those guys maximise what they are really good at. The guys we have brought in are really highly talented players and some of the guys we brought in last year like Mitch Knevitt and Ollie Dempsey got a taste of it.”

Max Holmes has returned in good nick.

The senior group of Cats have only been back at pre-season since Monday, with several players still easing their way onto the track.

Grigg picked out Parfitt and Holmes as two who have come back in good shape.

“There is probably not any one or two (leading the way), a couple of the young mids like Brandan Parfitt and Maxy Holmes have turned up looking really fit and putting their best foot forward,” he said.

The Cats were open and willing to take a long-term view with its players in 2022, famously holding Patrick Dangerfield back during the season before he exploded in September to win the Gary Ayres Medal as best finals player.

Grigg said the club would be open to do the same in 2023, given the options on the playing list.

“We’re always mindful of what the best preparation is for each player,” he said.

“We take that approach with the whole list, we don’t pigeon hole every player to play every game and do every training session.”

Cats still the hunters as pre-season begins

Geelong has retuned to pre-season as the hunters despite holding the premiership cup, as assistant coach Shaun Grigg declares the Cats are still chasing the best in the AFL.

Jeremy Cameron gets back to work. Picture: Alan Barber

The Cats will start the 2023 season carrying both a 16-game winning streak that was capped off with a dominant grand final win and a target on their backs as all other sides look to close the gap.

WHAT WE SAW AT GEELONG’S FIRST FULL TRAINING SESSION

But despite the smell of success still lingering around Geelong just over two months after the premiership triumph, Grigg said his players were still hunting others.

“We don’t feel like anyone is chasing us, we feel like we are chasing it again,” he said.

“Our players have come back with that mindset and have shown that with the way they presented themselves. We haven’t been training for very long but the guys have hit the track running so we are pleased with how they have returned.”

Patrick Dangerfield, Gary Rohan and Isaac Smith share a joke with Shaun Grigg. Picture: Alan Barber

Grigg knows only too well how a premiership defence can suddenly fall apart.

The reliable midfielder was a key part of Richmond’s 2018 side that appeared a lay down misère to repeat as premiers before being stunned and thrashed by Collingwood in a preliminary final.

Having lived through that collapse, Grigg said a key to carrying on after success was by always looking to improve.

Esava Ratugolea and Cam Guthrie. Geelong welcomed back its full list for the first day of training held at North Shore football ground in Norlane on Monday afternoon. Picture: Alan Barber

“We take nothing for granted, albeit we were lucky enough to win on the last day this season but that doesn’t give us a right that we are going to be even there next year,” he said.

“For us, we started to do some things right in the second half of the year and started to jell as a team so we want to continue that on but also to evolve and develop.

“In my experience, you can’t just roll out the exact same thing season after season. We have to evolve and we have to develop and that will come in varying ways for us such as different personnel. We will tinker with how we want to play so (getting better) is the things for us.”

Originally published as Hungry Geelong returns in good shape to start pre-season