GWS Giants escape from Sydney with training gear to last AFL lockout
Exercise bikes, ropes and training weights - gone! With gyms shut down and players no longer allowed to train at the football club, the GWS Giants had to take matters into their own hands. See the exclusive pictures.
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GWS Giants headquarters resembled a Saturday morning garage sale yesterday when players drove away with whatever equipment they could get their hands on to survive the AFL shutdown.
Stephen Coniglio flew home to Perth just hours after the season was suspended until at least May 31, while Toby Greene was already in a car driving back to Melbourne as other teammates met at the club to collect gear.
Across town, the Sydney Swans had also taken immediate steps to ensure players got back to their families interstate before borders are shut around the country.
With up to 80 per cent of club staff set to be stood down, AFL players may also be asked to take their medicine in the form of pay cuts, but at the Giants yesterday were just taking their medicine balls.
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Exercise bikes, ropes and training weights all vanished from the Giants’ Sydney Olympic Park premises.
Players are scrambling to work out how to stay in peak physical condition on their own, outside the AFL bubble.
The gear went so quickly the Giants even had to momentarily recall some of it until they got a green tick from the AFL on exactly what the rules are for “training at home” during the coronavirus lockout.
“Hence some of the pictures you would have seen today with equipment going out there door,” Giants football boss Jason McCartney said.
“We had that going out, and then we recalled some of the gear (until we) got the actual protocols of what the dos and don’t sare (from the AFL). We’ll get that gear back out to some of the players.
“They can get out to the park and do their running component. But with gyms being shut down, we’ve got to get creative and I know our high-performance team has had discussions with them over the past two or three weeks and has been ready with programs for whenever this time came.”
It’s understood the AFL may not restart the competition until it can be certain it can give clubs a “mini-pre-season” of at least 30 days.
The AFL will make sure it’s a blanket restart date for every club to avoid the prospect that restrictions could relax in one state before others, and give some teams an unfair advantage in terms of preparation.
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“If it goes beyond (May 31), I suppose the longer it goes without being able to have (the players) together, and players are just left to their own devices, it probably would need a longer lead-in time. It’s a bit of a wait and see,” McCartney said.
“As much as we want to get back and play, what we don’t want is … to put yourself at risk of coming back and then having tendon and soft tissue issues (because of loading). But the reality is we’re all in the same boat and playing by the same rules.”
Swans chairman Andrew Pridham said that the club was encouraging players with families interstate to hurry home to be with them if they felt more comfortable there than in Sydney.
“We’ll encourage this,” he said. “They’ll have individual expectations in terms of maintaining their physical condition, but it’s so secondary.”
The Swans have flagged the cold, hard reality of redundancies. The Giants will exhaust all measures possible before theylay off staff.
“We’ve worked very hard with the AFL to make sure our staff are well looked after,” McCartney said.
“This is a shutdown period. We will resume at some stage. We’ve got provisions in place for a period of time over the nextfew weeks that our staff from a finance standpoint are looked after.
“Beyond that we look at leave owing and things like that before we have to look at other measures.”
Originally published as GWS Giants escape from Sydney with training gear to last AFL lockout
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