{"id":75945,"date":"2021-02-03T07:16:35","date_gmt":"2021-02-02T21:16:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/afl.draftcentral.localhost\/?p=75945"},"modified":"2021-11-12T06:36:11","modified_gmt":"2021-11-11T20:36:11","slug":"rebels-ready-after-interrupted-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/2021\/02\/03\/rebels-ready-after-interrupted-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Rebels ready after interrupted 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">THE GREATER WESTERN VICTORIA (GWV) Rebels are making the most of an interrupted preseason, with Talent Operations Lead <\/span><b><i>Phil Partington <\/i><\/b>m<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">aking the most of the squad being all together when it happens, such as last weekend&#8217;s NAB League Girls Preseason Testing Day.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThis (NAB League Girls testing day) is the fifth time we\u2019ve had our girls all together since November,\u201d Partington said. \u201cIt\u2019s a credit to <em>Rookie Me<\/em> and also the AFL to have a testing day like this. &#8220;To see the whole squad and girls get the whole experience of testing is fantastic for them, not only as athletes but also as people.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Looking to optimise the players&#8217; time as a whole squad, the Rebels had a leadership development session planned for after the testing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThe girls haven\u2019t really spoken too much about that sort of stuff.\u201d Partington said in relation to leadership group selection. \u201cWe\u2019ve got <\/span><b><i>Damian Ross <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">our leadership consultant, and <\/span><b><i>David Loader, <\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">will do a two-hour session with the girls, speaking about our values of the football club and program, then they will select a leadership group for the year.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The effects of COVID-19 were felt in the NAB League with staff allocation heavily affected across the boys and girls programs. Despite the challenges teams have been confronted with, Partington is confident in the Rebels&#8217; coaching staff for the year ahead.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWe\u2019ve got a great coaching staff that&#8217;s just been appointed, we\u2019ve got a lot of AFL experience,&#8221; Partington said. &#8220;David Loader has been at North Melbourne Football Club for five years, and <\/span><b><i>Jason Lappin<\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, who\u2019s one of our assistant coaches,<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">has been in the AFL system for 12 to 13 years, so the girls are learning a lot.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cDuring that COVID period we made sure we kept in touch with our girls through Zooms and other social media sites to make sure they\u2019re doing their work and just to have someone to speak to as well. &#8220;A lot of our girls come from country farms, so they\u2019re isolated, so it\u2019s really important we keep a social connection with our kids and we\u2019ve done that pretty well with our coaching staff which is good.\u201d<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When asked who had impressed over preseason, it is no surprise Partington mentioned the two Rebels in the AFL Women\u2019s Academy squad.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cCertainly <\/span><b>Ella Friend<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and <\/span><b>Nyakoat Dojiok<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> have trained well over pre season, so expect some really good games out of that,&#8221; he said. \u201d<\/span><b>Paige Scott<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> who\u2019s a younger girl, 2022 draft eligible, she\u2019s been really impressive too the way she\u2019s been going in our trial games. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWe\u2019ve got some good girls coming through, we\u2019ll be a competitive group and the main thing is our girls will enjoy their footy and we\u2019ll get our best results when we really enjoy our footy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It wasn\u2019t only staff allocation affected by COVID. With training having to be heavily modified due to clubs being unable to play practice games, the Rebels had to change how they went about it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI suppose before Christmas was more the fundamentals of the game and getting a bit of a fitness base up,&#8221; Partington said. &#8220;The girls were given a good program over that Christmas period, and they\u2019re self-driven so they\u2019ve been not only pushing themselves, but also each other on Facebook.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cOur trial games have been just more game simulations, not so much trial games but more how do we play in these situations and a bit more game sense for them. &#8220;We had our last one last Wednesday and we\u2019ll roll into Round 1 this week.\u201d<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A feel good story is brewing at the Rebels as well, with 2002-born defender <\/span><b>Stephanie Glover <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">returning this year after an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury in 2020. Partington said she will fit in down back as one that has been really good during the pre-season phase.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Rebels will kick off their 2021 campaign against Geelong Falcons at Deakin University on Sunday, February 7.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>THE GREATER WESTERN VICTORIA (GWV) Rebels are making the most of an interrupted preseason, with Talent Operations Lead Phil Partington making the most of the squad being all together when it happens, such as last weekend&#8217;s NAB League Girls Preseason Testing Day. \u201cThis (NAB League Girls testing day) is the fifth time we\u2019ve had our [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":97,"featured_media":65627,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11592,18219,7949,7950,8,137],"tags":[15439,15440,6984,44,7942,15441,7988,2911,10587,2604,4153],"class_list":["post-75945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gwv-rebels","category-gwv-rebels-girls","category-nab-league","category-nab-league-girls","category-news","category-womens","tag-damian-ross","tag-david-loader","tag-ella-friend","tag-gwv-rebels","tag-gwv-rebels-preview","tag-jason-lappin","tag-nab-league-girls","tag-nyakoat-dojiok","tag-paige-scott","tag-phil-partington","tag-stephanie-glover"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/97"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75945"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91090,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75945\/revisions\/91090"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/central.rookieme.com\/afl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}