Panthers add flavour to pre-season

A DIVERSE pre-season program, favourable fixture and an influx of quality recruits should be enough for Bell Post Hill to waltz into another finals series.

The Panthers will aim for an 11th-straight grand final and fifth straight premiership, but to get there, coach Brad Martin decided to add some flavour to their pre-season.

“You have to keep them motivated I guess, we wanted to throw in some ideas and keep their minds ticking over,” Martin said. “We’ve had different people come in and we split half the training away from the club before Christmas with a bit of combat training down by the river.

“The aim was to introduce the boys to some stuff that they haven’t been exposed to, a purely different style of training. Then we came back with a footy focus and we wanted to be more advanced than where we were at in Round 1, so I think that will hold us in better stead.”

Returning Panthers Beau McNamara (Grovedale) and David Holzfeind (injury) are two of 47 players to have featured in at least one of the club’s seven premierships since 2010.

McNamara, in particular, will complement a backline already featuring four members of last year’s GDFL team of the year, including Cameron Addie and Tim Barton.

“No one will be pigeonholed to one position, it’s a back ... so based on match ups one of them can now sneak up forward,” Martin said.

Only two members from last year’s premiership side will be unavailable — Renn Lovitt (work) and Mitchell Gavin.

“Renn has a fly-in, fly-out job, so it’s kind of a wait-and-see situation, which has worked out well that we’ve groomed Liam Meyrich to play the role,” he said. Midfielder Matthew James was a standout in their practice match against Drysdale, while Blake Podnar has already been rated by Martin in the top five for foot skills at the club.

“We hope having these new guys on the list improves our position by 10 per cent to 20 per cent every season,” he said.