Two weeks back from the Christmas break, Norwood\u2019s General Manager of Football Daniel Menzel provides an update on how the Senior Men\u2019s Pre-Season is travelling.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Menzel, who also coaches the forward line at Norwood, said the Redlegs were off to a good start in 2026.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s nice to be back in 2026, and into the new year,\u201d Menzel said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Norwood Oval deck looks as nice as I\u2019ve seen it, which means that we are getting close to the season starting, and trial games won\u2019t be too far away.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Redlegs have an open match-simulation session on Monday, February 16 and an internal trial on Monday, February 23.<\/p>\n
Both sessions are open to the public, The Premiers Bar at Coopers Stadium will be open for drinks and Bistro Meals from 4:30pm on those two Monday dates, as well as every Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a very exciting time of year. It comes around quickly, but I think across all grades we\u2019ll be firing,\u201d Menzel said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is pleasing from a coaching perspective, is that you can see that a lot of the guys did the work over the Christmas period.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s always a challenging time, three weeks that they have off, and it\u2019s the festive time of year when people go back home and go away. It\u2019s clear the guys have put the work in.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are really healthy in terms of injuries as well, so we are really happy with the way we are sitting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Click the link below to see the full injury update.<\/p>\n
The Senior Men\u2019s squad completed their second 2km trial of the pre-season in late January.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were personal best results everywhere,\u201d Menzel said. \u201cWe had 42 players run the 2km time trial, and 35 of them beat their time from December, and the majority of those were PBs.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo have 50% of the group run PBs, it\u2019s extremely pleasing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith our quickest time being 6m:12s, and everyone in the group running almost within a minute of that is really impressive, it\u2019s a credit to the playing group and the strength and conditioning coaches.\u201d<\/p>\n
Declan Hamilton \u2013 who is approaching 150 games at the club \u2013 took out the time trial with his time of 6:12, followed by Alec Wright, Alastair Lord and Sam Simpson.<\/p>\n
\u201cSam Simpson beat his time by 17 seconds which was great, Mac Seal ran 16 seconds better, and a shout out to Max Hodges who took 21 seconds off his time and Tom Donnelly improved his time by 20 seconds.<\/p>\n
Menzel had been impressed with the new faces in the program, including the likes of Aaron Francis from the Sydney Swans, Harry Boyd returning from St Kilda and Kade Dittmar from Central District, as well as a large cohort from last season\u2019s U18s.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have roughly 20 new players that we\u2019ve brought into the club, with the U18s that have come up and the recruits we\u2019ve brought in,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a third of our group, and I wouldn\u2019t say that\u2019s been noticeable on the track which means they\u2019ve fitted in seamlessly, they\u2019ve adapted to the drills really well.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a couple in rehab, but the majority have been out on the track and learning new terminology, the game plan, but it\u2019s also a taxing time of year, so to be able to take all of that in whilst training under fatigue has been impressive.<\/p>\n
\u201cJosh Murphy has come over from the Ovens and Murray League and you can see he has that instinct, that natural goal sense, he moves really well as a forward. I\u2019ve been working with the forwards and it\u2019s exciting with Tristan Binder, Jackson Callow, Finn Heard, as well as the smalls like Matt Harms who is class and Connor Ling who has had a great pre-season.\u201d<\/p>\n
Listen to the full chat with Daniel Menzel on the latest episode of The Redlegs Review Podcast, via the link below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two weeks back from the Christmas break, Norwood\u2019s General Manager of Football Daniel Menzel provides an update on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":455058,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-455057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455057","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=455057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/455058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=455057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=455057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=455057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}