It felt more like pre-season training conditions in Perth than a late season hit out ahead of an important clash against Essendon tonight.
Foreign for this time of the year. But everything is a little foreign this year.
The mercury was nudging mid-20s and players applying liberal amounts of sun block before heading onto the oval adjacent to the Gold Coast Suns headquarters.
Perth people, no doubt, are craving a little sun after looking at today’s forecast.
The captain’s run is a closed session, usually the 26-28 players in the selection chop up are involved with the remainder of the squad training a different time or location. But a ‘closed’ session in this environment is tough to achieve.
On the balcony of the Suns facility a number of people enjoyed coffee or a snack as they watched on, including staff and players from Gold Coast. Can’t do much about that and they have been hospitable on both occasions we have visited.
And considering we are sharing the facilities at Sanctuary Cove with North Melbourne and Greater Western Sydney, there are not a lot of secrets in this game.
Once the players had splashed themselves with sun block, the hour-long session was spirited with a high level of skill achieved.
In the past the final training session before a game would be an opportunity to have the ball zing from end-to-end, the players would work on transition and connectivity, but no longer.
They might be on the same oval at the same time, but they work in their various lines – backs, mids and forwards – rarely coming together.
Backs work around would-be forwards (figures staked into the ground), mids tidy up their stoppage work and execution out of the traffic, while the forwards are about leading patterns.
The highlight was the forwards leaping onto a bag held by coach Luke Webster. Liam ‘Flying’ Ryan, showed that his match day aerial acrobatics are a honed craft, soaring high to take a number of big marks.
It was a fun close to the session with Ryan, Jarrod Cameron, Brendan Ah Chee, Bailey Williams and Oscar Allen all enjoying the opportunity to launch into the air.