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Hawthorn high performance boss rejects criticism of off-season length
Ash Browne • February 17th, 2025 10:35 am
The suggestion by Kane Cornes that AFL players are given too long an off-season and might be a factor in the spate of injuries this summer, has been rejected by one of the game’s longest and most respected high performance managers.
Hawthorn’s Peter Burge said he was comfortable with the current arrangement in which veteran players get up to 12 weeks at the end of the season, as well as the mandatory three-week industry-wide shut-down over the Christmas break.
“I think, for players and staff, the work-life balance side of things is really important,” Burge told the Hawks Insiders podcast.
“What has changed is clubs are training at a much higher intensity than we did 15-20 years ago.”
Burge, who returned to the Hawks in 2023 after working at Richmond for a decade under Damien Hardwick, said there had been a marked improvement in the quality of training in his time in the game.
“We train better, and we train with more quality, and we just have less time to do it,” the high performance boss added.
“So, there are risks there, but also our players have gotten much better at keeping themselves in really good condition in their break, and we've given them some responsibility to go away and do the work, follow their programs, and even use consultants to come back in optimal condition.”
According to Burge, the players now work much harder in the lead-up to their official return to pre-season training.
“The players are doing a lot more basic running and conditioning in their own time, whereas 15-20 years ago they would actually do a lot of it with us before we even touched the footies.
“So, the balance of the programming has changed quite a bit, and every group's different. I can only speak for our group, but I'm really comfortable and confident that our group come back in optimal condition, and we can go straight into footy with no real issues,” he said.
The Hawks meet Geelong on Monday in a practice match that has been reduced from five to four quarters due to issues with VFL player availability before finishing their pre-season at UTAS Stadium on February 27 against the Western Bulldogs.
