ANOTHER pre-season campaign is behind the Demons, but the season is just beginning. It also means the focus on training has shifted considerably, but that’s been in place since the NAB Cup.

Elite performance manager Dave Misson – who has built a reputation as one of Australian sport’s most versatile and accomplished in his field – says pre-season is vastly different to the requirements of in season.   

“You’re looking at two different pre-seasons to be honest. A pre-season could be anything from 10 weeks to 14 weeks and to me that’s a season in itself,” he told melbournefc.com.au.

“You don’t have that game that you’re preparing for and recovering from. You’re able to get a lot of work into your players with three big running sessions a week, and three or four weights sessions.

“It’s really the period where you can make some advances with their conditioning and their strength, and their football as well.”

Misson said the week leading into the first NAB Cup match was when the club altered its pre-season program to in season training. 

“When games start, it switches over a fair bit, because you’re preparing for and recovering from a pretty solid two hour effort every weekend,” he said.

“That’s where we switch to having the little session the day before the game, and our main session three days out, but there is a definite week where you change.

“For us, it’s about this week and next week leading into round one, and it’s about really getting a good handle on where we think our players are at, and what loading cycle we need to implement in the first month of the season.”

Misson said the toughest part of his job was throughout the NAB Cup/practice match period, when shortened matches, regional visits and the rotation of players for specific game times came into play.

“I reckon that’s the hardest period of the whole year, because you know roughly the minutes you want to get into players, but you take a pretty conservative line if guys pull up tight from a game,” he said.

“You’re really conscious of getting enough minutes into them, but also not putting them at risk, because if you get an injury in NAB Cup [round] one or two, you’re racing against the clock then to get them ready for round one.

“Even though round one is only worth four points, like round five or 14, round one has a special significance, because it really kicks the season off.”

But he said organising training during the season became easier in many respects.

“In season is essentially all about the game. Your planning is dictated by short weeks and long weeks, travel and non-travel games and managing every individual based on what they’ve done on the weekend, and Monday to Friday as well,” Misson said. 

“For us, this year, we know a lot more about our list and it’s been a little bit easier. But you could be at a club for 10 years and I reckon it’s still a pretty hard period to juggle.”

Misson said it was ideal for players to play three out of four NAB Cup/pre-season matches.

“Essentially, what would be great is to get 300 minutes of pre-season game time into your players, then give them the weekend off, before round one and then you’ve got 22 blokes who have got good minutes and who are freshened up. But it never works like that,” he said.

“We have plenty of blokes, who play all four [weeks] and plenty of blokes who play two. What it comes down to … you sit down and look at your round one team and look at the mix, and you don’t want to go in with too many guys who are really short, because you’ll get found out.

“It is a long year, the in season period and you want to make sure that they’re able to turn up ready to go.”

Misson said rotation caps, which have been earmarked for next year and beyond, will add another dimension to future pre-season training.

“Luckily for us, we only had one game where we had rotation caps and that was in Renmark, but looking ahead to next season, that’s going to be a significant change. It could change a lot of thinking in regards to pre-season training and that NAB Cup period and what you do.”

Misson said the players had worked tirelessly over the pre-season for the start of the 2013.   

“The players have trained really hard in the pre-season – not just in the pre-season – but in the eight-week break. They were given a really structured program. For four of those eight weeks, they trained really significantly and they came back in great nick,” he said.

“In the pre-Christmas period, we worked them really hard for seven or eight weeks and we’ve worked them hard since Christmas as well.

“For us, it’s going to be: can they sustain a high level of effort during the season? And when you talk about art and science – that’s where the art comes in a little bit and it’s backed up by the science, by juggling workloads. You don’t want guys to over train and become flat and fatigued.

“We’ve also had a big influx of first year players come in, who haven’t been in an AFL system, so we’re going to learn how they handle the rigors of AFL footy week in week out. Even at VFL level, it’s still going to be a bit of an unknown for a lot of them. We’re going to have to juggle their workloads to make them reasonably fresh on a week to week basis.”

Misson praised his team for the work it had done with the players this pre-season. 

“You’re very reliant on your staff and we’ve got a great staff with our strength and conditioning, physios and medical. To me, one of the biggest changes in preparing players for the AFL is that it’s no longer the one size fits all program,” he said.

“You get really specific with your player programs, and we’ve got some good people here. We made a few changes after last year and it’s worked really well for us. Gary Nichols heads up the physio and Alex Sakadjian has come on board with the rehab, which has been great. Sammy Pietsch is the rehab/physio and Rob Jackson oversees the strength [and conditioning], so everyone is really aware of their roles.

“Even though we still cross pollinate and collaborate with everything, we have demarcated roles and that’s worked really well for us.”