With the Queen's Birthday weekend coming up most leagues will have the week off signalling the middle of the season which is the best time to take some time to sit back and have a decent look at your progress this year.
This can be hard to do during the season as it can be all encompassing but you have some time to reflect and make informed judgments on your season to date without any emotion which can skew results.
From a team point of view we have dropped 2 games we believed we could win resulting in a win loss record of 5 and 3 compared to last years 7 and 1.
I can honestly say that we won't have our best or near best team on the park until the back end of the year with a few mid year holidays keeping some blokes out for extended periods of time so we have only probably been at 70% full strength tops so far this year.
We haven't played everyone once quite yet but there seems to be a top 6 or 7 and a bottom 5 so we should still play finals once we get everyone back in the team. Obviously the aim is to finish in the top at least get the double chance come September.
As a team we are little undersized in the midfield so we need to really work out our structures at stoppages so we don't have to fight and scrap with blokes bigger then us in tight. We play on a small ground so we like it in tight but a smaller midfield can get tired from battling against bigger opponents all day.
This has also resulted in average disposal coming into the forward line as we not getting a lot of clear takeaways from stoppages (of which there are plenty on reserves football!), and a lot of entries being kicks out of packs or under pressure.
We also haven't scored anywhere near as heavily as last year with a total score of 472 vs 809 this time last year. Defense is about the same with 354 vs 304.
Personally I've under-performed compare to last year with only 8 goals so far this year compared to 21 at the same time last year. As a tiny forward the average entries haven't helped my cause but I've also kicked more behinds then last year, especially from set shots which I'm usually very good from.
My knee injury has taken a bit off my performance unfortunately as I'm not quite as fast as used to be and I can't quite jump as high either which crucial at 168cms!
There's still minor actions I can't do 100% but there is no pain in the knee at all so I'm hoping it's still just a little protectiveness from the brain that will hopefully release over time.
I'm recovering better from games now compared to the earlier rounds which is great as I can get more training in during the week and my HRV baseline and daily readings have improved as well so I'm handling more volume better which is a positive sign.
My goals for the rest of the season is to hot the scoreboard every week (I've only missed 1 game without scoring a goal so far this year) and I need to present more if only to create space for our other forwards to work in and I'm no chance of getting the ball.
I'll need to get some goal kicking in during the week too so as not to go back to kicking behinds, especially from set shots. I've been good the past month with those though so hopefully I'm past the little case of the yips I had earlier.
Training wise with the week off I can dedicate this week and half of next week to some good old fashioned strength work. I haven't really lifted an appreciable load for 2 or 3 months now, not that you have to all the time, but it's time to top up my strength levels while I can train with a high workload without having to be fully recovered by Saturday.
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