The AFL pre-season is unnecessarily long and the home-and-away should be extended, according to renowned high-performance expert Darren Burgess.
And he believes rotations could be cut back further to help the game.
Burgess, who helped prime Melbourne for its premiership assault and is about to launch his training program at Adelaide, was speaking on this week’s edition of This Is Your Journey – thanks to Tobin Brothers.
Asked if the pre-season was too long, Burgess said: “Yes. I won’t even hesitate on that. It is absolutely too long.”
“Make the season longer and the pre-season shorter. TV gets more money, fans get to see more games. People think the season is too long as it is, but that’s because the pre-season is too long so everyone is fatigued.
“To a player – man and woman – they would rather play more games and train less.”
Some Carlton players officially returned to training in October, while players at all but a handful of clubs are already in the thick of it ahead of an AFL season that won’t start until mid-March.
Burgess will address the Crows players for the first time on Monday, but he said a 6-8 pre-season would be enough.
“That’s all you need,” he said.
“Have more games. I know there might be problems with cricket and all that, but I’m pretty certain we can circumnavigate that. I’m not sure there’s any negatives to it. That’s my opinion, anyway.
“What we showed last year is playing games every four days is not a problem. It’s not a problem for the players.”
The AFL reduced the interchange cap from 90 to 75 before the 2021 season, but Burgess believed the ceiling could be lowered again.
“I think it could probably come down further, if I’m honest. It’s not impacting the game massively from an injury point of view, but I think it’s probably unnecessary that there’s that many rotations,” he said.
“We could bring it down and the game wouldn’t be affected too much and our better players would be out on the ground more.”
He added that less rotations would potentially slow the game down and lessen the risk of high-velocity collisions.
“Concussion collisions - the sharp, change of direction stuff, are the more impactful injuries on the game and more importantly the players themselves.
“If there’s a way to just slightly open the game up and slow it down a little, I’d be interested in that. Certainly hamstrings are more common and groins, but in terms of the really nasty impact injuries, I think we have a duty of care to the players to look at ways of reducing those.”
Burgess did lament the fact that high performance manager across the competition were not consulted on such issues in a similar way to players and coaches.
“You’re going to get me in trouble here. Everybody else has a union; we don’t. The perception of us … we are in charge of the welfare of this group and we put players first at all times – it’s not just about running and conditioning and all that.
“It’s probably a little bit frustrating. I had some conversations in the hub with Brad Scott (AFL general manager football) so hopefully with him in charge things might change because he has an incredible lens on it.
“But I would like to think people would ask us, as a group, about the future of the game.”
Burgess’ comments come in a wide-ranging interview to air on 1116 SEN this Sunday at 10am. Born in Sydney, he got his break at the Swans before working at Port Adelaide and the Demons in the AFL.
But it’s his time in world football that he holds most dear, describing the 2010 World Cup with the Socceroos as a career highlight, while there’s colourful memories of his stints at Liverpool and Arsenal in the English Premier League.