LIFE AFTER FOOTY
AF AFL: Hawthorn will take a wary approach to next week’s return to full- contact training as the AFL edges closer to its June 11 season restart.
After being able to train in groups of eight this week, AFL players can resume full training on Monday – giving teams a handful of full-contact sessions to prepare for the rigours of playing.
“They’re competitive beasts ... so they’re looking forward to a bit of physical stuff next week,” Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson said yesterday.
“They’re pretty fit these lads, but it’s the combative type of stuff that we need to try and pick up quickly over the course of the next two or three weeks.
“Having four or five contact sessions in the lead-in to Round 2 will at least allow us to prepare for what we might face.”
Clarkson said he would hold his players back “a little bit” next week in an attempt to balance minimising injuries with ensuring their players were ready for the intensity of returning to play.
“Once we get back into combative types of exercises, then you’d expect there’ll be some injuries,” he said.
“It’s a collision sport and we know injuries are going to occur ... we can’t control the ones that happen in-game, (but) the ones at training we can control.
“We’ll try and manage that as best we possibly can, bearing in mind that we have to put our players at some form of risk in their preparation to play because otherwise we’ll just get wiped off the park.”