Adelaide Crows put through their paces at training yesterday. Picture: Tait Schmaal Source: Sunday Mail (SA)
THEY won't be playing tonight, but Adelaide's nine key players rested from the NAB Cup opener at AAMI Stadium are hardly on a summer holiday.
First-choice stars including Scott Thompson, skipper Nathan van Berlo, full back Ben Rutten, full forward Taylor Walker and midfield ace Rory Sloane have been held back from today's Twenty20-style triple-header between the Crows, Port Adelaide and St Kilda at West Lakes.
The group escaped a light training session with the selected squad of 31 on AAMI Stadium yesterday morning, but were instead put through a brutal aerobic work-out at nearby Max Basheer Reserve.
The session, captured by the Sunday Mail, showed the players burning up the track in a series of gut-busting running exercises.
Assistant coach Mark Bickley said regardless of extra simulation sessions, the club would aim for all players targeting the Round 1 clash with Essendon on March 22 to have at least two full games of match practice in their legs.
"You want them to play between eight and 12 quarters, I reckon," Bickley said.
"Two full games is the minimum. But there will be some that will play a bit more and some will play three or four (matches).
"They've done a lot of training, it's just to make them get back into that game sense."
The images revealed a lean and ripped Ben Rutten, who is defying his veteran status and approach to 200 games.
And Walker, who two years ago was banished to the SANFL for a perceived reluctance to work hard off the ball, can be seen charging ahead of small forward Jason Porplyzia and leading tireless Thompson.
Josh Jenkins and Shaun McKernan remain the top choices to partner Walker inside Adelaide's forward 50, but Bickley said it was likely that both would help form a three-man tall set-up.
"If you look at last year we had 10 games where we had (Kurt) Tippett, Walker, and either Jenkins or McKernan," Bickley said.
"So for half our season we played with three talls.
"I think you'll find at various stages we'll do that again. It won't be just McKernan or Jenkins - at different stages they might play together."
Port Adelaide also reinforced its game-plan under new coach Ken Hinkley during a light session at Alberton yesterday morning.
"We just had a bit of a catch, just basically trailing the pre-game routine that we're going to go with," Power strategist Alan Richardson said.
Port will play the second and third matches tonight, taking in a near full-strength squad including newly announced captain Travis Boak, midfielder Hamish Hartlett and full forward Jay Schulz.
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