After relocating to Melbourne from Sydney, St Kilda Football Club’s Elite Performance Manager, David Misson was intrigued by the city that is entrenched in sport and consumed by AFL media interest all year round.

Such was his surprise at the amount of focus and coverage of AFL in Melbourne, Misson decided to document his time at St Kilda Football Club throughout the course of one year.

‘The Bubble - Inside the Saints in 2010’, is the highly anticipated book that captures an intricate account of the daily operations of a football Club and provides readers with an insight into the sport that ignites its passionate consumers.

In explaining his main motivation for writing the book, Misson said; “Seeing the saturation in the media of footy when I arrived in Melbourne was really intriguing. You read so much in the media about the game, however no one really has a handle on what actually goes on and what is required to get a team on the park each and every week.”

‘The Bubble’ opens with Misson stating “I honestly believe only those on the inside understand the reality of a year in the life of a football club.” It’s a raw comment that Misson believes to be fact. While many people outside the Club’s walls have a certain perception of life inside an AFL team, it is a limited view of what actually occurs from the confines of an elite sporting organisation.

“There are so many different things that can happen in the course of a week. It’s a cliché, but a week is a long time in football and things can just pop up from anywhere, such as an illness or a death in the family. These are elements that don’t come to light publically, but they are all factors that can really have an effect on what happens on the weekend. Generally all that the public see is a team’s performance, which is then written about on a weekly basis, by people who aren’t really on the inside.”

Ultimately, Misson has written this book for one reason: to explain the constant challenge of getting 22 fit footballers on the field each and every week.

“From my point of view, it’s not just about the management of the players’ physical well being, but also the work the coaches put into preparation on opposition teams. It’s all year round - we talk about ‘being on the treadmill’ for 40 weeks of the year, the work doesn’t stop” Misson explains.

“I think it would be hard for people to comprehend. A lot of them see footballers as full time athletes who only train twice a week and then play on the weekend, but there are so many other aspects that go into getting those players ready for a game.”

After initially deciding to write the book based on working in the inner sanctum of a League Club, Misson ran the idea past Senior Coach Ross Lyon for his thoughts.

“Ross was the first one I spoke to about it and he was really supportive from the outset. I explained how passionate I was about my writing and that it was something I had always wanted to do” Misson said.

Having creatively penned minor pieces in the past while working with the Australian Cricket team, Misson is no stranger to the non-fiction world of writing.

“Steve Waugh encouraged me to write some poems, which we used to read out to the team on the morning of a game. We’d each then nominate a player to do another poem for the next day and we did that for probably 18 months. I then wrote a few stories and a couple of them went into his book, Steve Waugh’s Diaries” Misson said.

While Misson is proud of the ‘The Bubble’ and its final outcome, he did admit there were some challenging topics to cover throughout the year. Being faced with a player’s injury and then having to prepare them for a lengthy recovery period was one of those difficult moments.

When players sustain any sort of injury, Misson firmly believes “you just have to stay strong for them (the players).” Perhaps the most publicised injury sustained in 2010 was that of St Kilda skipper Nick Riewoldt, who injured his hamstring in Round 3 against Collingwood.

“When we saw the initial scans of Roo’s hamstring, we thought that it didn’t look like there was too much damage, but the head radiologist saw something a bit more sinister. Once it was on the big screen we all saw that his tendon was split in half. That was obviously shattering because we were quite pleased with how it looked initially, but then it appeared to be almost worst case scenario.”

While there had been severe damage to Riewoldt’s tendon, the Captain was firmly focused on a diligent recovery process and was committed to playing again in 2010. It’s this mental toughness the Saints forward possesses that Misson believes significantly contributed to Riewoldt’s ultimate successful return three months later.

“There’s an absolute given when it comes to rehab. If you’re strong mentally and you’re in the right place, physically you’re actually going to rehab yourself a lot better. Rooey made the decision pretty early on his rehab that he was definitely going to play again in 2010.”

“He (Riewoldt) was super professional from day one and when the team started to string a few games together, it really gave him a lot of encouragement because he saw that we were probably going to play finals and he was ready to be part of that. He was all systems go and it was just a matter of us taking the natural conservative approach and holding him back” Misson said.

‘The Bubble’ is an intriguing insight into the world of an AFL Club and provides a detailed account of the team behind the team, outlining just what it takes to bring 22 players to the field every week.


“The Bubble” - Inside the Saints in 2010
By David Misson - Elite Performance Manager, St Kilda Football Club
Published by Weston Media & Communications
RRP $35


About David Misson
David Misson has been at the forefront of preparing elite athletes for nearly 20 years. After working in elite sport for such organisations as the Wallabies, Waratahs, Cricket NSW, North Sydney Bears, Tennis Australia, NSWIS Track and Field and Sydney Swifts Netball, he linked up with the Australian Cricket Team from the period 1998 to 2001. From 2001 he started in AFL and worked with the Sydney Swans until he moved to Melbourne and began his journey with the St Kilda Football Club in 2008.