AFLW TACKLES THE GREAT DIVIDE

THE North Melbourne-Tasmania Kangaroos are using technology in an attempt to defeat the tyranny of distance ahead of their debut AFLW season.

While most of the squad is based out of the Roos’ traditional home ground, Arden Street, the partnership with Tasmania sees some of the current AFLW squad and the future stars training around the island state under former Brisbane and Western Bulldogs forward Trent Bartlett.

Coach Scott Gowans has the task to teach his side his game plan and set-ups ahead of the team’s first game on February 3 at North Hobart Oval against Carlton.

“The actual fundamentals of our game plan are being taught and then what we do with our team meetings is we video them, we also do them live so the girls can dial in and listen to what we are doing and vice-versa, if they have a meeting here we’ll listen in to what is being said down here,” Gowans said.

“We have individual programs for each girl and you could not tell the difference if you didn’t know where the girls live which is fantastic.”

Not only are the Roos using video streaming as an information highway to cross Bass Strait, their program is set up so that the Tasmanian squad heads north or the Arden Street squad heads south every two weeks.

“But on top of that the leadership group come up with their own idea that one of them will come down on the Saturday and do the main session with the girls down here,” he said.

The entire squad is in Tasmania on a pre-season camp.

On paper the Roos have built a strong group led by last year’s AFLW best and fairest Emma Kearney and former Collingwood star forward Mo Hope. Gowans has high hopes for his squad in its inaugural season.

“I can’t give you a prediction on where we’ll finish, but I know what we are trying to control what we can and one of those things we can’t control is results,” Gowans said.

“What we can control is performance and we’ve got a really big focus on training and trying to give our best performance each training session because that relates back to games.

“At the end of the day hopefully that brings results.”