No more excuses for Dees: Grimes
The Age
Thursday February 24, 2011
TOM Scully will miss tonight's NAB Cup match against Essendon with knee soreness, but the Demons have been bolstered by the inclusion of midfielder Nathan Jones."He [Scully] is running and training, and if it was in [the regular] season he'd probably play," teammate Jack Grimes said yesterday."It's nothing too serious. He's back flying, running laps again like he normally does."Jones's first game of the pre-season competition means all of Melbourne's revamped leadership group, including Grimes, will line up against the Bombers.Grimes, 21, has overcome a bad run with injuries in his first three seasons. "I did most of the pre-season and got through what I wanted to, so I feel really good at the moment," he said.After NAB Cup wins against Adelaide and Port Adelaide, the Demons hope to build on their momentum."We still feel we didn't play our best footy, and there's a lot of things we put in place over the pre-season that we really want to see come into the game this week," Grimes said.In coach Dean Bailey's fourth season, the defender said it was time to show real improvement. "We don't want to use that excuse any more that we're young and we're up-and-coming," he said."We feel like we've made a lot of improvements and there are no more excuses. We're ready to step up to the plate and deliver this season."Essendon skipper Jobe Watson has been ruled out of tonight's game, along with Scott Gumbleton, Nathan Lovett-Murray and David Zaharakis, after all four played in round one."It's going to be a rotation system throughout the NAB Cup and there's certain blokes that won't play different weeks," midfielder Brent Stanton said yesterday."We've had a pretty heavy [training] load during the pre-season and it [resting players] is just a maintenance thing before round one."Stanton said coach James Hird wanted nothing less than steady improvement on last year and the players were determined to deliver."It was a big build-up to last week [and] obviously we've still got a long way to go, but the defensive mindset of the players has been a big emphasis over the pre-season," he said."We'll keep training that way, playing that way and the more trust we have in the system the coaches have put forward there's no doubt the improvement will come."The players have been magnificent in the way they've opened their minds up and really accepted what the coaches want us to achieve this year."
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