COACH Simon Goodwin says he was particularly pleased with a couple of recruits, and a player who had an injury-riddled 2016, during Friday evening’s match simulation session at Olympic Park Oval.

Speaking after the hit-out, which featured most of Melbourne’s squad, plus a host of top-up players from Casey, Goodwin said he was pleased to see his charges in action.

“I thought Jake Melksham for his first game was very good and Dion Johnstone, as a small forward,” he told melbournefc.com.au.  

“I thought it was great to see Jay Kennedy-Harris run around again. I thought he looked really good.

“You’re more focused on the younger guys to see how they’re going to travel, but all of the experienced guys all put their hand up as well.”

Most importantly for Goodwin, there were no injuries from the session.

“There was a fair bit of cramping, which was probably from the end of a big [pre-season] program, so we’ll go in pretty healthy [against the Western Bulldogs in our first JLT Community Series] next week,” he said.  

Goodwin said the session was timed well on the back of the Sunshine Coast camp.

“It’s always difficult when you’re playing against yourself – it’s hard to watch in some ways. I thought it was a good hit out and the boys worked hard in pretty tough conditions,” he said.

“It was a pretty solid training session and it probably pulled together our camp, but now we’re back, our loads start to drop away now.

“In general terms, [I] was pretty happy – they did a lot right and the ground looked the way we like it to look at times and we’ll educate throughout the week.”

Goodwin said the scratch match reinforced that what the squad had trained over summer was starting to come out in games.

“Hopefully next week, when we’re playing against the proper opposition, we can get a good look at how we’re tracking and select a pretty positive team,” he said.

“I think they realise they’re back into game mode, which is really important for them.

“They’ve done the work – they’re ready to go – and they’re just looking forward to playing a proper opposition now.”