24 sessions in 100 days: Yze's concerns over pre-season schedule

Do AFL clubs need more time with their players over pre-season?

This summer break has seen an extortionate number of injuries, with statistics around player injuries coinciding with increasing amounts of time players spend away from training.

And according to Richmond coach Adem Yze, the extended break influences more than just health concerns.

Leading one of the competition's youngest sides, Yze has expressed that players simply aren't in and around clubland enough over summer to maximise both development and education, particularly concerning players with limited experience.

“To be brutally honest, if you’re a developing team, I feel like three or four weeks before Christmas isn’t long enough,” Yze told SEN Breakfast.

“We were quite fortunate; we got our players back in mid-November and the majority of our list right now is that younger group. We had 20-odd players training around that time.

“In saying that, the argument around first to four-year players start at whatever date and the five plus year players start on November 24th - some of those five plus year players haven’t really established themselves yet.

“I don’t know if it should be amount of time or if it should be the amount of games played before you get a longer break.

“You are forever trying to access your players. I just think that if it was mid-November, then everyone could start based on when the players wanted to. That would be a lot easier.

“We are a developing club. To educate your players, you need time. To have three and a half weeks before Christmas, and then they have another three weeks off over Christmas…

“I spoke to my players before they went away; from the first day of their leave until January the 8th, they were going to have 100 and something days off, and train for 24, which is pretty hard to educate and fast-track their development.

“Originally when it came in, it was based around the CBA (Collective Bargaining Agreement) and that’s okay, we have got to look after our players, and we don’t want to train them too hard.

“But even just rulings or the thought around… we can’t have access to them even with education, so we can’t even send things out to them.

“During their off-season, they train really hard, they come back fit, they can run and they can lift weights, but when you’ve got a young list, you want to be able to educate and fast track the development of their brains.

“If we can’t do that, and we are not allowed to send that information, our hands are tied until they walk in the building.

“Whether there’s just a slight adjustment on when we can start sending that information out and start fast tracking their development and their education around game style – even if that was a variation that we could bring in for the younger teams, that would be handy.”