The Lions had their third, and arguably their toughest, main training session for the week this morning at Noosa Football Club, followed by a beach recovery session at Main Beach.
“We had a solid session out there this morning,” Black said.
“The boys are in a better place than they were this time last year so it’ll be an interesting couple of months coming up.”
Black, who this week started his fifteenth pre-season with the Lions along with his teammates on a week-long camp at Noosa, said that the main focuses for the pre-season were fitness and winning the contested ball.
“Pre-season’s where you make a lot of inroads,” Black said.
“Being a running game, you’ve got to get your running ability up and your contested footy training.”
“They are a couple of our main focuses - being able to finish games strong, and win a bit more of the footy.”
Despite the win-loss ratio in 2011, Black said that he had enjoyed the past 12 months and was pleased to see the development of the young Lions midfield - most of whom are at least ten years his junior.
“Our younger guys are starting to get around that 50-game mark where you regularly become a contributor week in, week out so that’s a real upside for us, and those guys are only going to improve.”
Black re-signed with the Lions for another year in October, with a clause to extend for another year if performance benchmarks are met.
“I’ve been a Lions man for 14 years so it’s good to sign up again and hopefully I’ll have a good year,” Black said.
“To use a cliché - I’ll just take it one week at a time!”
The Lions are spending their first week of pre-season at training camp on the Sunshine Coast. Keep an eye on lions.com.au for all the exclusive news, diairies, and video from Noosa.
