We chat with Head of Physiotherapy and Medical Services Damian Raper as the entire playing squad returned for pre-season training.

General overview of players return to pre-season

It’s really good to have the entire playing group back together. We had our five-year players come back into the program on Monday and there were some really good results for the 2km time trial, with 11 players producing personal bests, which is really impressive.

It shows they put in some hard work over the off-season which is really reassuring to see and sets us up for a good pre-season.

Nick Blakey

Nick Blakey is going well. He is four weeks into a running program and at the moment he is building some volume and speed into his running. He’s going to be doing some football progressions over the break and then he will look to join the main group in January.

Callum Mills

Callum is going well and is probably a little bit ahead of where we expected him to be. We’ve been really lucky to receive some external expert advice from a tendon specialist who has been consulting to Callum. He is running at the moment, he is building his volumes up to five-six km per session so we’re happy with his progress.

Will Hayward

He is back in full training now and has fully recovered from his shoulder surgery. He is doing everything normally in the gym and back doing full contact training well

Sam Naismith

It’s obviously going to be a really long and slow progress for Sam, but he is attacking his rehabilitation well. It has been 10 months since his operation now, and he catches up with the surgeon again this week, so we’re hoping the surgeon is going to be happy with his progress and is going to allow him to continue his rehab.