\n Sam Lalor is eyeing off a big pre-season as he prepares for the 2026 campaign.\n <\/p>\n
\n By Henry Milic, Richmond Media\n <\/p>\n
Having appeared in 11 games in his debut season at the Swinburne Centre, Sam Lalor quickly proved he belonged at the elite level.<\/p>\n
In his very first AFL game, he recorded 18 disposals, two tackles and two goals \u2013 an outstanding performance that earned him a Rising Star nomination. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Now, Lalor plans to get back to his best by setting himself up with a strong pre-season, after recovering from a hamstring injury.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went to New Zealand, which was nice, but I\u2019m back training now,” Lalor told 7 News.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s pretty full on, but there are a few boys around the Club, which is good to see…we are working hard.”<\/p>\n
Despite Lalor\u2019s season being cut short due to a hamstring injury, the 19-year-old still picked up the Club\u2019s Bill Cosgrove\/Harry Jenkins Best First Year Player Award.<\/p>\n
In a season full of challenges, Lalor credited his older teammates for helping him get through his rehab.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is frustrating, you want to be playing every week and to do the same injury three times is pretty tough,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt first I was pretty flat, but since then I\u2019ve kept my head up and all the older boys have helped me through it as well.”<\/p>\n
Richmond\u2019s playing group will return to the Swinburne Centre next month to begin pre-season training.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sam Lalor is eyeing off a big pre-season as he prepares for the 2026 campaign. By Henry Milic,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209294,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85,83],"class_list":{"0":"post-209293","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-afl","8":"tag-afl","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-australian-football-league","12":"tag-australianfootballleague","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-text"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}