Bulldogs look to continue building in 2017

PRE-season training at South Fremantle has commenced this week with the Bulldogs looking to build on the momentum created in 2016 when they returned to the WAFL finals for the first time since 2011.

Following four years out of the finals mix, South Fremantle put together a tremendous 2016 campaign ending the home and away season in second position before beating West Perth in a qualifying final and going down to Peel Thunder in the preliminary final.

Nobody at the Bulldogs is content with those achievements, though, and the work has already begun on improving further in 2017 with the commencement of pre-season training at Fremantle Community Bank Oval this week.

On the back of seeing Tom Vandeleur, Blaine Johnson, Mason Shaw and Dylan Main returning to South Fremantle last year after time in the AFL, the Bulldogs have already announced that Jermaine Miller-Lewis (Hawthorn) and Jarrod Pickett (Gold Coast) will be doing the same in 2017.

South Fremantle will also welcome back 2009 premiership forward Cory Dell’Olio in 2017 after he was forced to sit out all last season while Jarrod Parry will be like a new recruit on return from a knee reconstruction.

Pre-season training commenced on Monday night at Fremantle Community Bank Oval with over 50 players in attendance including almost 20 from last season’s colts team. Those included Jimmy Miller, Dylan Brown, Caleb Datson and Chad Pearson.

Miller-Lewis, Parry and Dell’Olio were among those players to hit the training track on the opening night of pre-season along with regular league team members Ashton Hams, Josh Pullman, Johnson, Main, Jason Maskos, Matthew Gundry and Blayne Wilson.

It is a healthy South Fremantle squad with the only two players still on the rehab list being Adam McIntosh and Josh Branchi.

Training will continue until Christmas with sessions every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

South Fremantle coach Todd Curley is entering his third season in charge of the Bulldogs and is looking forward to the upward trend of the group continuing.

“Upon reflection we still have a pretty young group and we think it was a step in the right direction in 2016. The challenge now is to come prepared to work hard again and make it another year in 2017 where we make finals first of all and give ourselves a chance,” Curley said.

“Moving forward, we have worked hard on building the way we want to play so that won’t change a lot but we will look to improve facets of it.

“There has been quite a lot of change to our list over the past two years but we think the majority of our players will now stay together for 2017 and hopefully the little taste they had of finals footy this year will drive them to want to play more and more, and improve more and more.”