Rhythm and Blues:The Age

[Silvagnis]

Rhythm and Blues

Great article.

So what, exactly, are they doing to make the most of it? They’ve made a start. Carlton spent around $11.5 million on its football department last year.

This season, $3 million more will be spent. In 2007, the players relied on one full-time fitness coach, and a couple of part-time assistants. This season, Justin Cordy is managing a high-performance unit that includes a full-time weights coach and a full-time strength and conditioning coach.

They’ve been told to buy the equipment they need, and like Sydney and St Kilda, the Blues have invested in a "neural networking system": a software program that lets them input data on a player’s physical and psychological state, before predicting potential injury problems and helping set and monitor training loads. Preventing injury is an important part.

Good to see we're finally catching up to the other clubs with development and coaching.

The club’s first, second and third-year players are enrolled in a "Football Academy," which is overseen by development coaches David Teague and Matthew Lappin, appointed because they are recently retired and because they already had a strong affinity with the Carlton list. Teague is also a trained teacher, and the playing coach of the Northern Bullants.

During the week, the program involves specialist training sessions, where players might work on a particular skill, or on understanding a particular rule.

They go though game tapes, and through vision of such things as their kicking technique. Another component is the psychologically based leadership program in conjunction with Swinburne University. The program is about "emotional intelligence" — the ability to understand and manage emotions, and for the club, understanding the personalities it has, and what traits could do with further development.

Teague or Lappin have been accompanying small groups of players to football games — like Friday night’s match between the Bulldogs and Essendon — where they’re assigned players (who generally play like them, or in similar spots) to watch and report back on.

Nine players went to the soccer last week, and groups have been or are going to netball and basketball to see how other sports do things.

"It’s mostly about getting their minds switched on," said Teague. "Not just going out on the weekend and playing footy, but thinking more about their performances and why we want them to do things.

"It was interesting the other night at the soccer. We were sitting in a row so it was hard to talk, but I’d spoken to them previously about how I wanted them to look for the things soccer players did to help each other out, and at half-time they all came up to me with all these ideas for how it could translate to footy.

"What we want is for the young guys to get to a stage where rather than having to tell them things and point everything out, they can watch a game and pick up on all the different cues.

"We give them sheets to fill out every time we do something, and hopefully in time it will become second nature, they’ll be watching footy and trying to learn from it, rather than just sitting there spectating. That’s the goal."

Teague hopes his on-field coaching will speed things up too; when he goes through tapes, he’d like to explain why he had them do something, not tell them what they should have done after the event.

"I just feel I can get my message across better when I’m out there, whether it’s going up to someone straight away when something happens rather than send a message out via a runner or wait until the next week," he said.

"They’re a bit more detached when they watch it back on tape, they don’t care as much. But when you’re out on the ground, they’re involved in the game and you can push a lot of small details.

"I’ve actually found it a lot easier to coach. I sat in the box one day and I found it easier to be on the ground where you can communicate directly with the guys straight away, rather than write things down and talk to them later on. You can get some really direct, immediate advice across, when they can actually do something about it."

I'm sure we'll support all the young players and not bag them for not becoming stars overnight.