Most teams are very inconsistent this season. How much is the interchange cap contributing to this?
Very much I reckon. If you have the AFL Live app with an AFL Live season pass you can access data on which players are currently on the bench for each side. Just from casual observation all teams tend to have their youngest, least experienced players on the pine for the longest periods.
Even Hawthorn have done this with our own sitting there for as long as 10+ minutes at a time. The difference being that our players have prepared their bodies for marathon endurance, repeat efforts and faster stamina recovery.
It hurt us a bit earlier in the season where the teams that were beefed up had the stamina to run with us for the whole game and actually outlast us as they bashed us a bit. But now they are struggling to keep up and recover with the accumulating effects of a season catching up.
This is around the point of the year that the beefed up Essendon players would start succumbing to soft tissue and joint injuries each year following a dominant first two thirds of the season.
It's no coincidence that we've had a pretty much fully fit 22 to take into our last 3 GFs.