{"id":321561,"date":"2025-12-01T23:52:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T23:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/321561\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T23:52:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T23:52:10","slug":"docker-primed-for-2026-after-strong-off-season-afl-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/321561\/","title":{"rendered":"Docker primed for 2026 after strong off-season – AFL News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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After a horror run with injury in 2025, Hayden Young<\/a> has declared he is primed for a strong pre-season heading into 2026.<\/p>\n

Young, who played just nine games last season, said an off-season trip to Aspetar was a crucial part of preparing his injury-prone body for the demands of pre-season.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’ve had a really good off-season\u2026 I spent a week in Doha training to help me prepare for the season and keep myself on the park,\u201d Young said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI walked away with a lot of different tools that will help me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Young highlighted how last year’s poor pre-season ultimately led to increased injury risk and a lack of confidence in his body.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reality is last year I completed 27% of pre-season,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cLast year coming back and playing there were times I didn’t really feel confident in my body. It’s not a great feeling when you’re going out there playing in big games and not sure how your body’s going to hold up.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Young missing the majority of the season, it forced a number of players to fill the void left in the midfield. Although not ideal, it was a silver lining for the Dockers, giving them flexibility through different areas of the ground heading into 2026.<\/p>\n

\u201cOther players had to step up, we saw what Corey Wagner<\/a> did\u2026 Shai Bolton<\/a> went through there and now Murphy Reid<\/a> has the opportunity to float through there,” Young added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s great for Caleb (Serong), Andy (Brayshaw) and myself to be able to flip forward at times or throw different things at the opposition.\u201d<\/p>\n

When quizzed on the Dockers’ evolving brand of footy, Young hinted that the Dockers were looking to add an element of control coming out of their defensive half.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast year we were 18th for uncontested marks\u2026 It’s part of our game where we want to find a bit more balance,” he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt felt like we were a good team when we trusted the contest and the game was a bit more chaotic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we want levers we can pull, and one of those levers will be controlling the ball and moving it a bit quicker out of our back half.”\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a horror run with injury in 2025, Hayden Young has declared he is primed for a strong…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":321562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-321561","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"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321561","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=321561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}