After a ten-week break, the full Sydney Swans playing group returned to the club for their first pre-season training session on Monday morning at Lakeside Oval.
As is the norm for the first day of pre-season, the players started their campaign with a 3km time trial followed by a skills session and repeat running.
Dan Hannebery crossed the line first in today’s time trial ahead of Craig Bird, Lloyd Perris and Ben McGlynn while Dane Rampe and Kieren Jack finished just outside the top group.
New recruit Lance Franklin, who attracted plenty of media interest at his first full pre-season session at the club, also took part in the time trial and finished just behind fellow key position player Ted Richards in the middle of the group.
Speaking for the first time this pre-season, coach John Longmire said he was pleased with Franklin’s first session since joining the Swans.
“He did the 3km time trial and he and Ted Richards were the first of our key position players across the line,” Longmire told the media.
“From that aspect, Teddy Richards is a pretty good runner, but we’re still getting used to what (Franklin) can and can’t do as far as his running capacity is concerned.
“We know that Teddy can run pretty well as a player who is 6’3”-6’4” and Buddy is bigger than that and he finished around about the same time as Teddy.
“Seeing what he was able to do on the ground today is certainly something I’m sure the players are excited about.”
While Franklin’s move to Sydney has been well documented in the media over the last two months, Longmire said he was not concerned about Buddy’s off-season behaviour.
The coach said it was now time to move on from the off-season and re-focus on preparing for the season ahead.
“(Franklin) is like every player, they’ve had their off-season and now it’s time to get to work,” he said.
“He’s like every player on our list except that he’s going to have a lot of attention on him and he understands that and we know that.
“From what I’ve seen he’s turned up today and ran hard and prepared well and we expect that to continue and we expect anything off the field to be professional.
“(He might have attracted) more cameras but the reality is that there is the same amount of work that needs to be done and 300m and 400m to be completed and 3km time trials and all of that has got to be done.”
With just two weeks of training ahead of the Christmas break, Longmire said the playing group would undertake an intensive program over the next fortnight to ensure they are on track leading into the new year.
“It’s been good to get back into the training sessions and the younger blokes have been going for a few weeks, so it’s good to have the older blokes here,” he said.
“They’ve only got a couple of weeks before Christmas so we have to make every session count.”
