Our reserves team started the season last Saturday with a strong win over Belconnen in the AFL Canberra competition where they play each week.
At the moment we’ve got the luxury of having a very healthy list of players, with few injuries. We have senior players such as Paul Bevan, Ted Richards, Ed Barlow and Nick Smith playing in the reserves. That is unfortunate for them, but they are putting pressure on the guys playing seniors so it is really healthy environment to improve.
And constant improvement is what it is all about in the development department, which includes me and Development Coaches Daniel McPherson, and Stuart Dew, who retired last year after playing in premierships with Port Adelaide and Hawthorn.
From a Club point of view having a strong, healthy reserves team is great because it allows us to simulate everything we do at senior level. All team structures, game plan and team rules we have in place in the seniors, is also employed at reserves level.
So from a team and education standpoint, it helps the young guys develop.
Last year we brought five young men to the club, after selecting them in the AFL national draft. It is a massive day for them and their families. They’ve achieved their dream of being chosen to play for an AFL club.
But in so many ways it is just another small step along the pathway to becoming an elite footballer.
Senior coach Paul Roos and I both believe that the young guys coming through the national Under 18 competition now are generally a long way from being ready to play senior football at AFL standard - and we think the gap is getting bigger.
We’ve had a couple of exceptions to the rule in the last two years, with Dan Hannebery, who was drafted at the end of 2008, and Lewis Jetta and Trent Dennis-Lane, who were drafted last year.
Lewis is 20, and Trent is 21, so they were both more mature age selections.
And Dan, who played seven games last year despite the fact he was still at school in Melbourne, is just one of those unusually talented players who is likely to hold his spot this year if he keeps playing as he has been recently.
But no matter how talented they are, the first thing we do with players when we get them in is to educate them about the way we play. They’ve all got their own natural flair and their own skills but we teach them how to play our style of game, which takes a while.
Every AFL club plays a different style of football. We play a more defensive one-on-one brand of football, everyone knows that, but more and more teams are employing a zone defence. So we have to teach them how to work through a zone, and it is not an easy thing to do.
It is about how you use the ball, and your positioning, so when we get these new recruits to the Club, we not only have to improve their physical conditioning but also teach them our own game plan, and how to beat other teams’ game plans. You have to play to do that, not just train, so that is what takes the longest.
And then, over-riding all that, is the need to simply teach them how to be professional footballers. A lot of what we do in the development area is about teaching them how to push their own physical and mental boundaries, learning how to play when they’re sore and how to push through when they’re fatigued.
So we probably push them hard in that regard. It’s our responsibility to utilise all available resources at our Club and fast track their development to become senior players.
Player welfare manager Dennis Carroll, a former captain and member of the team of the century, is fantastic, and the boys need that balance to become the well-rounded Swans players we want at our Club.
