loris bertolacci

Development in the Australian Football League AFL

I recently listened to Kevin Bartlett and Peter Daicos on SEN talking about development in the AFL. Daicos spoke about the importance of development. It was interesting but still missed the real factors involved in long term development in any sport really. In the end the discussion focussed too much on one or two years.

The AFL is a sanitized and manipulated sport. And so one cannot buy teams it seems. We have seen teams try to mix and match in the past few years and develop on the run by recycling some players. This simply has not worked. Most teams that have won flags recently have stuck with a core of players and worked through almost 10 years of development. West Coast Eagles started a restructure in the late 90’s with their list. Sydney had been though a lengthy period with a mature group before crashing through. Port Adelaide the same with a very mature group. Many years of pre seasons and heartache. And more so waiting till the core group was an average of 25 to 26 years of age with really good proven veterans and quality young players mainly from 21 to 25. Thats it. Add to that what seems to be a need to have some money floating aound to service the team with needs such as medical, fitness, massage and other critical needs. Clubs such as North Melbourne have certainly not delivered given they simply have not had resources in my opinion and yet have been thereabouts. I always use a seemingly trivial area such as massage to point out the need for resources. I am sure the power clubs have massive budgets for massage whilst North would have very little. This is not a 1% but may be a .25%. All adds up by finals.

Time and time again we point at reviews or culture or other totally nebuluous and subejctive concepts. If the team has a core of hardened players that have an average of 6 pre seasons and some finals experience one has a chance. If they average 100 games of AFL footy the chance increases. If the club is well financed the chance increases. If there is some relative and current political stability then the chance increases. We have seen recent examples of clubs winning flags with supposedly poor cultures so I query that one.

We are talking about young men who represent these clubs, but with mature bodies. Every club has a leadership group now but someone has to finish last. If the club can get on a winning role then usually everyone is happy including media and supporters. Added to financial stability this helps . Then clubs make good decisions when in a positive frame of mind and the positive cycle continues. Teams that lose a lot usually meddle and overtrain inseason. More disasters. Young bodies. Old bodies. Stress. Crash and burn.

When teams are firing, bodies are mature, but still vibrant and fresh, less injuries occur. It simply is less stressful. And when less injuries occur there is less drain on the current list and so again less wear and tear occurs and the load is evenly distributed. So less injuries.

Without talking about the science of it all, there is no doubt that a positive frame of mind can assist the avoidance of injury and illness so the whole cycle becomes “virtuous” and one is on a roll.

It takes a glut of injuries or total political instability and some losses to upset this “happy” cycle. Does happen and recent events have demonstrated this. Or in the end your best players are too old and young players too young and there are no warriors in between. By 2005 this was Brisbane. And did Adelaide lose their opportunity to win in 2006 with an injury glut at the end of the season Maybe? But now they seem to have old players and young players. So do they make a decision to go into a long term development phase or do they keep trying to have a crack by mixing and matching given they are so weel resourced and well coached. Tough eh! And is the Bullodgs now reasonable well resourced and with a quality core gorup at the right age? When I did my consultancy on their ACL injuries in 2006 at the Bulldogs I can assure readers that their resources were light years behind those of Geelongs without elaborating. It was tough for the players I thought, after having worked at Essendon. Colingwood and Geelong.

So development means that over time players have pumped weights, run miles, made heaps of decisions on the ground, learnt their skills from coaches, grown up socially and been involved in a vibrant well resourced club. After all there have been some excellent cultures with clubs that are poorly resourced and they do not seem to win.

Remember it takes time and in the highly controlled AFL compettition, 9 times out of ten one simply has to get the best players together at a young age, train them properly for 6 to 8 years and make sure the business is ok. You won’t win with a bunch of 23 years olds or a bunch of 28 year olds and it seems you won’t win with a paupers budget. And this is the AFL not Premier League Soccer where the best can be bought so the AFL’s contolled environment allows for objective analysis.

And then those 25 year olds have to be good players with the odd star. And really the 22 games is the accurate reflection of development. The finals are a slight lottery. And yes other things have to be ok, But get long term development wrong and fight nature and forget it.

Simple. HA.

Loris Bertolacci

July 5, 2008 - Posted by Loris Bertolacci | AFL, Development, Uncategorized