ASPIRING AFL PLAYERS GET DRAFT PREVIEW IN TWO-DAY CAMP

BELL Park has given its juniors a taste of what preparing for the AFL draft would be like with a two-day academy camp.

The Jimmy Bartel Academy gives junior footballers at Bell Park the chance to experience two days of high-level coaching, learn about nutrition, and put themselves through the fitness and skills tests that prospective AFL draftees would endure at the combine.

Forty-two kids took part in this year’s program, which included a tour of the new Brownlow Stand at Simonds Stadium with Brian Cook, a goal-setting session and a leadership seminar.

“It’s a holiday program Bell Park set up a few years ago for juniors to experience a few days of coaching and diet and combine-like testing,” Bartel said.

“It’s just a great outlet for the kids during their school holidays and Peter Burke, Chris Lynch and the Sheringhams do a fantastic job.

“They almost see what it’s like to become an AFL footballer, but also just gives the kids something to do on the holidays.

“They get to meet some great people from Bell Park and learn about setting goals and a healthy lifestyle. If a couple of them go on to become good footballers then so be it, but it’s just about showing them some new experiences and keeping them in footy.”

Senior co-coach Tim Sheringham said the program was adapted to catch up with modern combine testing, including the Yo-Yo test in replacement of the Beep Test.

“It’s going to be new to the draft camp this year; they’re going from 3km to 2km, so we thought we might as well do what’s current,” Sheringham said.

“We missed it last year; it fell off the perch a little bit, but we wanted to get it back up and running this year.

“It’s hugely important given the status of the competition now and point system and salary cap; with the number of juniors coming through, we feel exposing them to higher level coaching over those couple of days might get something burning in their belly that they’ll want to get more improvement out of themselves.”