The extra physical demands and pressure which players are put under at this time of the year is obvious for all to see, however it’s the increased demands off the field which go unnoticed by much of the footballing public.
And it’s these off field demands which I’m ashamed to say have impacted on the regularity of my “Jibes” and in turn bought into question my journalistic integrity.
At this time of year the corporate world is getting excited about football and holding numerous functions - local footy teams are having auctions, sponsors are questioning whether they’ve got enough bang for their bucks and fans are starting to worry that they may go through another season without getting that signed Eagles guernsey.
All of these cyclical events impact on footballers and mean that a couple of us are even forced to use our player diaries during the later weeks of the season. But do not misinterpret my writings as a whinge.
I’m honoured that I can give something small back to the football clubs which have helped me growing up, sponsors give great support to players, Eagles fans have been fantastic to us this season, have stuck with us through our trials and are now hopefully basking in our triumphs, and like it or not, the corporate world is the lifeblood of modern day AFL football.
All of these groups of people do deserve players’ time, however, hours in the day being something that can’t be increased, footballers at this time of year are “busy bees”. It’s this increase in off-field commitments which makes momentum on the field even more important than most people would realise.
If your team is losing and playing poor football, everything in your life seems to become a chore and subsequently the increased appearances and off field demands can bog you down at this time of the year. This is something I’ve felt quite strongly in years gone by.
However, when your team is playing well, off field your much happier and can subsequently cope with the increased demands. So you can see that losing momentum late in the year is a bit of a double edged sword.
Not only does it affect how your playing in it’s own right, but if you couple that with the anguish it causes off field, the effect on field soon becomes double.
The momentum which the Eagles are currently enjoying is largely due to the evenness of the team’s performance. Chad Fletcher and Darren Glass have both been standouts over the past two months, however you could go through our whole team at the minute and say that pretty much everyone has been in good form.
Rowan Jones has been in good form, however due to team balance and match ups, that wasn’t even enough to keep him in the side. This is a great problem for a football club to have, and I believe it’s the first time since I’ve been at the club that good players in good form have missed out on selection.
With Ben Cousins hopefully coming back this week another in form player will be left out of the starting 22, and while this is
incredibly unfortunate for the player who gets dropped, it’s a great
situation for a team to be in at this stage of the season.
The even performances which we have produced over recent weeks also makes it a lot harder for opposition clubs to coach against us. Woosh has mentioned this before, and that if a side only uses three midfielders, you’re able to plan heavily around how you’ll play those midfielders, and how you’ll counteract their set ups.
However, when a side has six or eight players running through the midfield the planning process becomes that much harder because the possibilities are that much greater. Having said all of this, though, we know this week will be a very tough task.
We’re not counting our chickens before they’ve hatched, we realise that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush and we’re just taking it one week at a time.
