bing181

So why aren't the other possible flag contenders loading? We've just been beaten by 3 of them, presumably it would cancel out. (If it were happening of course ... cough, cough). Fairyland.

The majority of people on here rabbiting on about loading don't even know what it is, yet alone have any actual (i.e., factual) evidence that we're doing it. In the post-match interview on Monday, ANB scoffed at the idea that our current losses might have something to do with fitness. i'm with ANB.

"After multiple interviews and review of CCTV vision from the night, the AFL is satisfied the initial club-imposed sanctions are appropriate and will take no further action." https://www.afl.com.au/news/780678/afl-statement-steven-may-and-jake-melksham

There's fitness ... but there's also freshness. If you're fatigued or banged up, or even coming back from being banged up (Salem, Langdon etc.), it doesn't matter how fit you are, you won't be able to fully exploit it. There's no reason to believe we aren't as fit as last year (see ANB in post-match interview).

No it didn’t. They weren’t pushing through injuries. “you can build them up and push them through those periods where they're a little sore, a little bit tender and a little bit fatigued … ”

The cupboard is bare. So hard to win back to back flags, especially with a young group. The finals themselves take so much out of you, then you lose 4 - 5 weeks break in the off-season. Lots of players look drained, and not just the younger ones. I always wondered how long Ed Langdon could keep on being the running machine - starting to find out. Hopefully the bye helps, but not holding my breath.

Some ridiculous comments here. We're losing matches because we're not able to kick a high enough score, or any sort of score for that matter. No firepower up forward, and good backlines are doing us over.

Don't disagree, but with May out, Lever is being asked to play as a KPD - which was never his go. He's never been a great one-one-one, lockdown defender, he needs the freedom to use his ability to read the play to intercept etc. But then this comes back to what's going on further up the ground, where we're not able to prevent quick ball movement into the oppo forward line and especially, quick transition from opposition back line - which used to be one of our great strengths.

Hmm. I'd question that.

Amongst all that, they're battling it out - but injuries knocking us round, both in available players and on game day. But, issue remains the forward line. You're not going to win matches kicking 8 and 9 goals. Not even sure what the answer is, especially with McDonald out for the season (effectively).

Issues in the backline, but we desperately need someone to stand up down forward.

Some discussions to be had here in the post-game thread. If we get home, will be doing well, just so banged up and missing those few key players.

Know it's been said, but missing May. Random cursing.

A lot of the articles on alcohol consumption and brain injury are similar. Actual studies with real data are more nuanced. e.g. "Alcohol Consumption Does not Impede Recovery from Mild to Moderate Traumatic Brain Injury" https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27534259/ Even the linked article in the original post says "The takeaway was that alcohol consumption neither hurt nor helped the recovery in concussion patients." Though personally, if I had a concussion not sure I'd be going out and getting smashed. Though also personally, if I was an AFL footballer, not sure I'd be getting smashed during the week in any case, I don't know how they do it. Interesting that Frederick was banned because he'd broken Fremantle's no drinking on a 6 day turnaround rule, which is in place because as Longmuir pointed out, drinking isn't great for recovery.

Presumably it means that Turner is in for Tomlinson, who then becomes emergency in case Petty doesn't get up. Hibberd takes Hunt's place.

In theory, Rivers and Bowie should be our lock-down small defenders.

Agree a bit stuff on Hunt, though not disputing the fact that he's been dropped, especially with Hibberd and Rivers available. But last week was a bit of a perfect storm for him, the backline a bit all over the shop without May there and Salem still off the pace, and he got stuck one on one with Papley and Heeney, two of the best in the business.

No sweat, I probably could have phrased it otherwise.

I don't work in the field of sports science, not sure where you got that info. I'm involved in research (assessing proposals amongst other things), but it's not in sports science.

I do quite a bit of work in the research field, and you learn not to give undue weight to single studies or one-offs. Interesting, and would be more interesting if there were half a dozen -Coach-'s. Not to mention anyone who's actually been involved in these programs.

But it goes way beyond this club, or even AFL football.

Perhaps. But going through a specific load/de-load protocol and all that that entails, is a bit different to "ramping up training", which could be ... well, anything. Burgess spoke of doing heavier than usual training sessions in the weeks off during the finals (to duplicate game-day loads), but that's very different to what's being discussed here.

It's a post on a fan forum from 2 years ago from an armchair pundit who's thrown in some nice graphics to give it more credibility. OK, confirmation bias, go for it, but ... It astonishes (but doesn't surprise) me that all the "evidence" that this is occurring is hearsay.

No Steven, not THAT kind of loading.

Not sure what the possible confusion is. The "targeted periods of loading and unloading across different stages of a season" refers to the pre-season (higher load) and in-season (reduction in overall training load). There were no targeted periods of loading during the season. The second part refers to in-week periodisation, which Burgess and co. covered in the soccer study - harder training earlier in the week to maintain fitness, ease up before matches. BTW, there was a thread last year on this, maybe tack all this onto that rather than across these other discussions. Mods?