SCOTT Watters’ second pre-season at the Saints has seen vast improvements according to the St Kilda coach.
After a two-week training camp to Boulder, Colorado before Christmas, Watters said the group was clearly more advanced than where it was 12 months earlier.
“The start of last year, probably over the first two months we made almost a dozen changes to our football department. There is a degree of instability that comes with that so I look at our pre-season and there are very few changes,” Watters said in an interview on Melbourne radio station SEN on Monday.
“There is real stability about what we have got here resource-wise and I think that is flowing through our whole pre-season which has certainly been a jump up. We’re really happy with how we’re progressing.”
One standout of pre-season training so far has been midfielder Jack Steven who won the club’s professional trainer award before Christmas.
Aerobically gifted ruckman Ben McEvoy has taken his fitness to a new level, while defender James Gwilt has impressed in his second year back from a knee reconstruction.
And some of the Saints’ veterans are starting to ramp up their workload after being carefully managed over summer.
“We’re really pleased with where we fit from a health perspective. We have a couple of senior players who have been on modified programs –Sam Fisher, Sean Dempster and Stephen Milne who are now coming back in to full training,” Watters said.
“Outside of those guys we have been pretty fortunate so far with the only really disappointing thing in our pre-season being Daniel Markworth with a knee reco. Outside of that we are pretty fit and healthy.”
Dempster’s meticulous approach to training is widely known throughout the league with Watters admitting he admired him from afar before joining the Saints.
But after seeing him up close, Watters said he couldn’t help but marvel at the professionalism of the All-Australian defender.
“He was always respected universally across the competition so I had that level of respect for him. But seeing the way he prepares, in my time in footy I don’t think I have seen anyone who is as thorough in his preparation,” he said.
“He is quite unbelievable so the flow-on effect for us with our young players is they watch the way he goes about his business and I think it has huge ramifications across our playing list.”
Watters reiterated the mantra that birth certificates have no factor on selection policy, rather hard work and preparation will be rewarded.
“If you look at Tom Lee and Tom Hickey, obviously they are players who are going to address some deficiencies in our list going forward,” he said.
“We see Tom Hickey as being a 10-year ruckman at this club to support Ben McEvoy and we see Tom Lee as being really exciting 194-195cm key forward who provides a really strong succession plan for us. We have to have an eye for the future at the same time we don’t want to use excuses and be a side that hides behind development either. We want to be competitive.”
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