Hamstring injuries, mental attitude and kicking skills ... the agenda is the same at every AFL club this season
MONDAY reviews at the 18 AFL clubs would have three common themes — injuries, attitude and skills.
Michelangelo Rucci
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WANT to make some good money in the AFL? It is a good time to be a consultant.
Top-three issues that will have AFL football departments putting out the red carpet to those with answers are: Hamstrings, kicking skills and what happens above the shoulders.
WHY is there a rash of hamstring injuries this season?
The list at Adelaide — that grows every week — is more concerning for how it has collected both young and experienced players, such as club champion Matt Crouch and goalkicking hero Eddie Betts, for the first time with hamstring woes.
ow there is no case to be made about the bikes at West Lakes during the Neil Craig-Charlie Walsh era. But does a bad run of soft-tissue injuries lead to new questions on training methods or the strain on player muscles in the new era of limited interchange rotations?
Or is just a “black cat” phase that will pass?
Hamstring injuries have been the most common in Australian football for more than a century. And the notion the leg muscle “pinged” most during cold Saturday afternoons in June and July offers no insight when Port Adelaide midfielder-forward Chad Wingard is feeling a hamstring in an air-conditioned Etihad Stadium.
Whoever nails the cause — and finds the answer — to the hamstring curse will make a fortune across an 18-team competition that counts the cost of injuries against the chances of playing in September’s top-eight finals.
JUST where is the “switch” that determines if an AFL team “comes to play”?
Port Adelaide’s greatest change — from being timid and reactive at home against Geelong to brave and assertive against North Melbourne at the Power’s nightmare chamber at Etihad Stadium — was all above the shoulders.
So was the difference in effort and attitude in the Crows’ past two home games at Adelaide Oval against Collingwood (48-point loss) and Gold Coast (48-point win)?
As Adelaide club champion and All-Australian midfielder Matt Crouch told The Advertiser at the weekend: “It was a mindset thing that night (against Collingwood).
“Each individual is responsible for that ... you know when you go out there that you are in the right frame of mind to compete (or not) — and compete for the whole game. It is up to the individual.”
AND why would — in the professional era of full-time training — would kicking skills be so disappointing?
More than 50 years have passed since master SANFL premiership coach Jack Oatey put a 44-gallon steel drum on its side and on a stand at Unley Oval to hone kicking while producing super-skilled teams with non-professional footballers at Sturt.
And Oatey’s players were training under poor floodlights after going through the demands of an eight-hour work day — rather than sunlight when football is the job at hand.
How can the professional era — with full-time coaches and video analysis offering unprecedented insight — deliver poorer results on the AFL fields? Perhaps the intense focus on the game plan, the opposition and micro-tactics has taken attention from the more-important challenge on the training track ... the skills that will hold up (or drag down) the playbook.
michelangelo.rucci@news.com.au
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