I just learnt that the English Premier league goes for 40 weeks a year. In other words they only have 12 weeks for the rest of the year. AFL seems to have 13 weeks off (for the 10 non-finalists) and also a pre- season. Maybe I'm a little off topic but do the English soccer teams have a preseason? Surely their required levels of fitness are not hugely less than in AFL. Oh and if we ever try to have every team play each other twice we would have a similarly long season with the same questions I'm asking here.

As I understand it, the round ball game never really stops. Between Premier, Champions, National representation and a few gap fillers, a top level footballer is more often stuck to choose between competing fixtures than to have time off.

Fortunately for them, soccer has a more narrow range of physical demands, and each individual game isn't anywhere near as taxing as top level Australian football.

52 minutes ago, Little Goffy said:

As I understand it, the round ball game never really stops. Between Premier, Champions, National representation and a few gap fillers, a top level footballer is more often stuck to choose between competing fixtures than to have time off.

Fortunately for them, soccer has a more narrow range of physical demands, and each individual game isn't anywhere near as taxing as top level Australian football.

Hmm, I'd say you'd be right. If I'm not mistaken soccer pitches are a lot smaller and matches don't go as long etc meaning fitness demands are a little less exacting . Surely players still get a few weeks completely off and the preseasons hence are a fair bit shorter than AFL ones. I guess if there's nothing like the 9-10 weeks gap AFL players can have from September to November that soccer players never get too rusty or lose much base-level fitness. But if soccer preseasons are maybe 6 or 7 weeks shorter than AFL's would anywhere near as many players surprise as much with skills improvement between seasons? I'd love to know.