Carlton’s new high performance guru says he’s been pleasantly surprised after arrival at Carlton
CARLTON’S new high performance manager Andrew Russell has given Charlie Curnow the highest compliment while praising Sam Docherty’s recovery from his knee reconstruction.
BRAD Lloyd was only weeks into his new job at Carlton when he tried a Hail Mary many had attempted before.
Scouring the football world for a new high-performance guru, Carlton’s football boss called Hawthorn’s Andrew Russell to ask which up-and-comers he should consider for the vacancy.
Russell’s expertise in AFL circles is unrivalled, after a career with premiership success at Essendon (2000) and Port Adelaide (2004) before an extended stint and four flags working in lock-step with Alastair Clarkson.
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Then came the query almost certain to be rebuffed.
“I am not doing my job if I don’t ask about you,” Lloyd said to Russell.
Russell was contracted and concedes he had never been tempted by any of the myriad job offers that had come his way from elite US and English sports organisations.
Yet only a matter of weeks on from Lloyd’s query, Russell was sitting in a Carlton cafe overlooking Princes Park detailing his new role after a coup as significant as recruits Mitch McGovern or Will Setterfield.
So why would a man at the pinnacle of physical preparation leave the AFL’s best coach and club to move to a two-win team across town from his Mount Eliza home?
As it turns out, the Blues had hit up Russell at the perfect moment, the first time in his tenure at Hawthorn that he had began to think: “What next?”
Russell is a week into his new role at Carlton and brimming with ideas about the new program.
“I had such an amazing experience at Hawthorn and there were four people who came to the club together who were still left — physio Andrew Lambert, doctor Michael Makdissi, myself and Clarko,’’ he told the Herald Sun.
“My role had started to change a bit, I was doing a bit more leadership and I had started to mentor people internally for when I left and my view was that my time at Hawthorn was coming to an end.
“I didn’t know if I was leaving Hawthorn to stay in footy, to go to America or England, to just go and consult.
“I had 12 months to go on my contract and I had already started transitioning myself out and thinking about what was beyond that and Carlton Football Club came to me.
“I have had many opportunities to leave Hawthorn and I didn’t consider one of them for a second a nd so it was the first time I was actually open to it.”
He conceded good mate Clarkson did not see his decision coming.
But he said it was the perfect time for a new person to join the Hawks’ journey as the premiership coach was contracted for four more years and the list was on an upswing.
For every industry person who had lauded Carlton’s coup in signing Russell, there were equal numbers of wags on social media who said they had never seen a sports scientist getting a kick.
What Carlton knew was that he was much more than a sports scientist after two decades in the industry.
Russell will help set up a program that minimises injuries, and extracts the most from its talented but raw list.
“I have been pleasantly surprised about the enthusiasm and energy in the place, and it’s a different energy to a club like Hawthorn which has been up there for a long time,’’ he said.
“There are so many people here who are excited about working towards being a good football team.
Russell has a wealth of experience across a trio of elite clubs that he hopes he can use to instruct Carlton’s young brigade and inspire them to be their best.
“You talk to a kid and say, ‘You are better than Luke Hodge at doing this. You are not as good as him at doing that’.
“So they say, ‘I am better than Hodgey at that? And then if I can get as good at that area then I can work towards being a good player’.
“There is so much more to football than just training.
“The best players become good players because they embrace the holistic nature of what they do.
“So hopefully I can teach them habits about how they train, how they live, how they eat, the role they play in the footy club.”
New Carlton fitness boss Andrew Russell on:
NEW ARRIVALS
“Mitch McGovern is really excited and he’s shown some really good leadership qualities coming in. He has got some really strong beliefs about how the game should be played.
He is bringing some really good stuff from what the Crows did well. Fasolo has good experience. Will Setterfield is a great young man who is chomping at the bit to play footy and the boys like him already. He has been accepted really well. We have Nic Newman coming from a good system at Sydney, so we have got some guys from really good systems and it just adds to your culture. Grab a little bit from all of them because there are a lot of clubs doing really good stuff.”
CHARLIE CURNOW
“I love the freedom with which he trains and lives his life and the way players live their life is the way they play. Charlie has real freedom in the way he moves. The way footy is set up now isn’t great for creative players. So we have to let them play on instinct. In some ways he reminds me of Buddy (Lance Franklin) in his younger years when he said, ‘The world is my oyster, let’s have a crack at it’.”
SAM DOCHERTY
“He is really impressive about the way he trains and thinks about the game. Already I have sensed that he is going to drive the standards hard and he’s thinking very much about what is best for Carlton. So Patrick Cripps and him will work together very well.”
THE KIDS
“There are a number of guys like Harry McKay that I see progressing very quickly in the next 12-24 months. Zac Fisher has impressed me, he can move really well. (Tom) De Koning is showing real progression, Jacob Weitering was last off the track today. Charlie Curnow went inside to do some stuff and then came out and said, “I want to do some extra work, what can I do”.”
POWER OF THE MIND
“What you find in a season is that a player’s body breaks down after their mind breaks down. If you track and monitor players, a lot of times there are flags there that you listen to or ignore. Stress in the game is huge. Shaun Burgoyne broke down the week after his 300th game. Everyone said what a great achievement it was but it was a highly stressful week for Shaun and no wonder he broke down the next week. The coach wants every single player training every session but sometimes if they miss for a week or session you get them for the next four weeks.”
EXTRA SKILL WORK
“Players need to do a lot of goalkicking but they need to have a purpose to do it. There is no point in practising 500 times a week and doing it with no purpose or incorrectly. But in terms of volume I am not conservative with how much they kick or do goalkicking. We have an integrated football and conditioning approach. The players know there is purpose to everything we do.”
Originally published as Carlton’s new high performance guru says he’s been pleasantly surprised after arrival at Carlton
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