Former Essendon and GWS fitness boss John Quinn says players will need a six-week lead-in to season restart, with injuries still a huge risk

How long will players need to prepare fully for the season to restart? League officials are hopeful of a three-week mini-pre-season, but one leading fitness expert warns it won’t be enough. LISTEN

A fitness guru says a three-week pre-season is not enough for footy stars like Marcus Bontempelli and Scott Pendlebury. Picture: Michael Klein

AFL players would require six weeks of lead-in training time to restart the season, a leading former club fitness boss has declared, with the suggestion of a three-week mini pre-season “stuff all” time to be ready.

John Quinn, the former head of sports science at Essendon and Greater Western Sydney, has warned that the league must brace for a slew of injuries when the season gets started again as players readjust to the physical demands.

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A three-week preparation period has been flagged, but he says that would amount to little progress.

“Three weeks is better than none, but it’s still pretty close to stuff all, to be honest,” Quinn told the Herald Sun Footy Podcast.

Collingwood skipper Scott Pendlebury trains on his own in Melbourne. Picture: AAP

“The minimum you’d want to have to even start to get some sort of adaptation taking place is about six weeks.

“If you consider a normal season, you’d probably have about 15 weeks. So you’re giving the players around about a third of that time to get ready, and in part of that time they’d also be involved in games, like the (pre-season competition).

That’s going by the wayside, so that in many respects is just specific conditioning or preparation.

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John Quinn, right, served as high performance boss at both Essendon and the Giants.

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“They’re going to go from a longer time off where they’ve basically detrained, and now they’re going to come back in and have a very short lead-in time where they won’t even get the proper adaptation to play, and then they’re not even going to get preparation games – they’re going to go straight in and hit the ground running.”

He said that potential for decreased list sizes for varying reasons along with the return to a potentially increased playing load off shorter breaks would “100 per cent” lead to more soft tissue injures.

“I think it’s a real risk,” he said.