The Gold Coast had the first Bye of 2011 and then got touched up the following week against Carlton at the Gabba, while the Adelaide Crows were beaten by Fremantle at home last weekend after having a week off. It will be interesting to see how North Melbourne - who had the Bye in Round 3 - respond in their match against Fremantle this Sunday over at Subiaco.
We’re obviously faced with the Bye this week together with the Western Bulldogs and our Round 5 opponent St Kilda.
Given we’re sitting at 0-3 and are still feeling relatively fresh, I’m sure all our boys can’t get out there quickly enough to try and get our first win on the board against the Saints.
But at the same time, it’s probably not a bad thing for us to have a small break. We won’t get our second Bye until Round 19, so it’s important we take advantage of this one.
We’ve travelled interstate over the past two weeks and have a lot of young guys who have probably played more senior footy than they would have expected by Round 3.
Last week against Melbourne we had six blokes who had played less than 10 senior AFL games, and it’s important that their bodies are managed throughout the season so they don’t wear out later in the year.
That first game against Fremantle was particularly tough for the boys considering we only had one interchange player for pretty much all of the second half after Browny, Brent Staker and Claye Beams went down with injuries.
It meant our guys had to take on a bigger workload than planned without the regular stints on the interchange bench.
The Bye also gives our injured guys an extra week to get themselves right. Josh Drummond isn’t far away from playing senior footy and neither is Matt Maguire.
It will be interesting to see how the fixture is put together next year when GWS comes into the competition.
I think there’s still a definite need for a couple Byes throughout the season. Maybe they can trial a Split Round in Round 8 and another in Round 16 next year.
