Carlton key defender Jacob Weitering is gearing up for a fifth season in the league and following a strong 2019 season, is hoping to take his game to the next level.
Blues backline coach Dale Amos has been impressed with the 21-year-old’s work to get himself in great shape heading into the pre-season.
“I’m probably a little bit biased, but Jacob Weitering has come back in really good shape and looks like he’s ready to build on what was a really solid year,” Amos told SEN Drive.
“He took some really big jobs down back, particularly in the absence of Liam Jones, and has really consolidated himself in the back half.”
Weitering said he has had to learn fast playing in a key defensive position for a team hovering down the bottom of the ladder.
“I’ve had some good patches and some poor patches and those poor patches I’d like to think I’ve learned a lot from,” he told SEN Afternoons.
“That sort of coincided with the club in a difficult period, but judging off the back of last year, there’s some exciting times ahead for the club and hopefully some consistent footy for me.”
Before his sacking, Brendon Bolton was the only coach Weitering had known at AFL level.
He admits it has been an adjustment with David Teague now at the helm.
“For me it is a big change to lose the head coach I started with and drafted me so three and a half years of Brendon Bolton’s coaching and then to have David, he was already a line coach so the boys had a relationship with him already prior to becoming the coach,” he said.
Weitering adds that the Blues started to play with more freedom in the second half of the year.
“The boys just wanted to go out there and enjoy their football as much as possible and that allowed us to train with a relaxed mindset and attitude and be confident in our abilities and I guess the wins were able to come relatively quickly,” he said.
“The first game we played against Brisbane it wasn’t looking so good. We were 39 points down halfway through the second term and the boys rallied around.
“(The second half of the year) was a little bit of a building block towards this pre-season now and we’ll concentrate on that.”