Pre-season making of Petracca
A DESIRE to be “best on ground” in every training session in pre-season was partly behind Christian Petracca’s rise to AFL superstar, ex-Melbourne high performance manager Darren Burgess says.
Burgess has joined Adelaide as he wants to be close to his children in South Australia after spending two years at the Demons.
The stint coincided with Petracca transforming himself from a player with talent, but rarely fulfilling it, to one of the best players in the league — capped off by a 39-possession, two-goal game in the grand final to win himself the Norm Smith Medal.
Burgess said behind this transformation for the No.2 pick of the 2014 draft was a change in mindset.
“I was lucky to come in at a time where Tracc started to realise that his potential needed to be realised and he just matured as a person,” he said.
“And what he was able to do, just every session — whether it was in the gym or on the field — he just attacked at absolutely 100 per cent.
“And I mean that, in every session, even the ones in December when other people might have been a bit tired and were thinking ‘Christmas is coming up and we have three months till the start of the season’ he dominated.”
Burgess said Petracca often featured in the Demons’ beston-ground for each training session in that period.
“At the end of each session, we had a conversation about who was best on ground in each session and he wanted to be in that conversation each session,” Burgess said.
“It’s a credit to him for attacking every single session with that intensity.”