Short-term focus can only help players, says coach
GEELONG VFLW coach Paul Hood says his focus must be kept on the short-term, despite the club’s beckoning introduction to AFLW.
A number of the Cats’ stateleague players will be offered places on Geelong’s AFLW list next year, but Hood said he would not let that distract him from developing the entire VFLW list.
“We’re focused on every single player developing to the best of their ability,” he said.
“That’s their goal, and the AFLW thing will take care of itself for those individuals who continue to develop their game and make themselves into an AFLW type of player.
“Really, we’re focusing on the now. We’ve got the longterm in mind, of course, but we’re focusing on every training session, every week, every game, making sure you can be the best you can be.
“We’ve notified a couple of our players internally that they’re really under the microscope and keep performing well, and I think we’re going to do that for all of our players anyway, to make sure they’ve got the best physical program to help them audition for an AFLW spot.”
Hood said playing in big games, and hopefully finals, would also be invaluable to his players’ development.
“(Finals) would be nice. We just want to do as well as we can every week, but we certainly want to test ourselves against the best in the competition,” he said.
“We don’t know how good the best teams are — if the Western Bulldogs’ AFL cohort are all playing for the Western Spurs in the VFL, they’re going to be hard to beat — so we don’t know how it’s going to play out.
“But any big-game experience we can get against the good teams, or in finals if it happens to play out, will be really good for our group.”
There are a number of rule changes this year, with a minimum of five players from each team forced to reset in both halves of the ground at every stoppage.
Hood said the biggest difference between last year and this year was the experience of his list.
“What was already a tremendous strength of this group was the amount of feedback they give the coaching staff,” he said.
“They tell you what they think they need, they tell you what they need to learn and what they want, but already now the group, having played a few games, having seen a season at this level and then watched some more AFLW, they’re really keen to share what they’ve learnt, what they’re thinking and what they’d like to know.
“As a coach and for our entire coaching staff, that’s terrific to get that feedback from the players and work with delivering the kind of program that they want.”