AFLW season seven has started with some of the best displays of women’s football we have seen, but it has not come without a considerable array of challenges for players and high-performance staff.

Having two seasons in one year forced clubs to be innovative in their preparations for season seven. I can guarantee no two clubs have prepared the same way. Some decided to push through the “off” period to build their fitness base with a more traditional pre-season, while others chose to maintain their fitness but allowed players a much-needed break between seasons, focusing more on skill acquisition and improvement, along with mental and physical recovery from season six (which only finished in April).

New teams will also have different football-specific focuses to existing teams. Expansion sides Port Adelaide, Essendon, Hawthorn and Sydney will likely prioritise their overall game-plan implementation and team bonding, having not played together before, while established teams are more likely to fine tune rather than make huge changes.

The team that adjusts best to this increase in overall load and navigates the challenges will be the team sitting at the top of the ladder come November.

It’s also important to touch on the effect of travel on recovery, considering we will all travel twice as much in 2022. All teams are subject to a degree of travel, but for West Australian teams the travel schedule is considerably more extensive. My team, Fremantle, is likely to cover at least 23,500km, flying to four different states with more than 31 hours of flight time across the 10-week regular season. And that’s not taking into account the time spent sitting at airports waiting for those flights.

Don’t get me wrong, there are benefits to travel in regard to team bonding, availability and time for team meetings and mental preparation for games. However, the negative effects of flying are widely documented, let alone the effect on athletes needing to both prepare for and recover from games.

Our typical flight schedule includes travel one to two days prior to playing, and returning home on a late afternoon or night flight straight after the game (the only exception being when we play a night game interstate). Sleep is the most important recovery tool, but sleeping on a plane is not my forte. Even if I do manage to get to sleep, it is a broken sleep, often resulting in waking with a sore neck or back from the position I’ve managed to twist myself into. The associated small amount of jet lag also affects fatigue levels and sleep quality.

On a number of occasions we haven’t arrived back in Perth until the early hours of the morning due to limited flight availabilities, and I know this is also often the case for teams flying home from Perth post-game. If it’s a Sunday game, most of my teammates must choose between taking an extra day off work to help their recovery or waking early to return to work on a Monday morning.

The physiological effects of air travel itself include increased inflammation and swelling from the low cabin pressure and prolonged sitting, magnifying the inevitable soreness following a tough physical contest.

Sufficient oxygen uptake in the blood is essential for effective recovery, but on flights there are lower levels of oxygen in the dry, recycled air, which can also increase risk of dehydration.

Post-game there is also a period of lowered immunity as your body attempts to recover from the stress it has been under during the game, resulting in higher risk of sickness, especially now we are once again flying with the general public.

Then you throw in the prospect of six-day breaks, which have become more common in this COVID era. We spend the first 48 to 72 hours just trying to feel human again, all while beginning the preparation and training process for our next game.

The longer it takes to recover between games, the most at-risk you are for soft-tissue and non-contact ligament injuries in particular.

Unfortunately, the opening three rounds of the season have produced a staggering seven ACL injuries, along with a number of other serious or season-ending injuries. These are in addition to long-term injuries sustained during the pre-season, and other medium-term soft-tissue or joint injuries.

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There are many factors that contribute to the rate of injuries. Although some can be put down to pure bad luck, an increase in the number of players and games will inevitably increase the overall number of injuries.

But the question remains: will this season produce a higher rate of injuries than previous seasons due to the short turnaround and the cumulative load?

The back end of the season will be the real test.