Big Ben
The Age
Tuesday February 13, 2001
It's as inevitable a part of footy as the pre-season training shot of some player splashing water over his face after a torrid summer training session.
The rippling muscles shot, the look-who's-spent-summer-in-the-gym pic. This year it was Ben Cousins, muscles fair rippling under a tank-top, snapped at a training session a week or so before his promotion to the West Coast co-captaincy.
Throw in the fact that Collingwood has spent the off-season bulking up under a new fitness regimen, and the question just about leaps out at you: is there a new body shape for football in a new century?
The answer is yes - and no. With its varied physical demands and varied positions, Australian football is still, as it always was, a game that accommodates players of all shapes and sizes. From Matthew "Spider" Burton, whose only other sporting option at the flagpole height of 2.10 metres would be basketball, to Tony Liberatore who, at 1.63, looks up to many a primary school lad.
"We're constantly pursuing the Olympic ideal: higher, stronger, faster," says Melbourne football manager Danny Corcoran, "but there's always that little bloke who comes along who can't run, can't jump but just seems to get a lot of the ball".
Corcoran, who helped pioneer the new professional approach to fitness at Essendon in the early 1990s, cites last year's recruit of the year, Paul Hasleby, as an example.
"The reports on him (from the draft camp) were can't jump, not big enough, skinfolds too high. But he can play."
The players of all sizes are trained for an array of tasks. At either end of the spectrum, Burton and Liberatore are destined for pre-ordained roles. Key-position players need height and strength to absorb the inevitable physical contact.
The rest, though, can be pretty well turned out to order. If you want someone for the in-and-under midfielder's role, strength and explosive speed rate high. An in-close midfielder needs to be able to chug along all day and navigate in the traffic, a-la Robert Harvey. Then there's the running players, whose numbers have shown the biggest increase in recent times.
How players look will be influenced, too, by where they are in their career. Collingwood is gearing its fitness program this year taking two factors into account. First, a lot of the players on the list are still maturing physically; second, coach Mick Malthouse favors a hard-hitting, hard-running style.
David Buttifant, the club's new fitness adviser, says you can expect to see a bigger Collingwood against St Kilda at Docklands on Friday night.
"We've done a lot of work with the weights, and it's been very specific to the players' deficiencies," Buttifant says.
Buttifant was at North Melbourne from 1995 to 1997 and has spent the past two years working with athletes of all sports at the New South Wales Institute of Sport.
"We're definitely a lot stronger," says Buttifant, "we've put a big emphasis on the strength side. Part of it is maturation, our young players are bigger anyway, but we will definitely be a stronger side."
Specific needs aside, the trend in football is running firmly away from bulk, or bulk for bulk's sake, at least. The muscles-on-muscles look probably went out with Rene Kink and Mick Conlan.
"I don't see much need for bulk," John Quinn says bluntly.
"One of the more obvious trends is leanness," observes Bohdan Babijczuk.
Quinn and Babijczuk are the fitness coordinators at Essendon and Hawthorn, respectively. Interestingly, both come from an athletics background. Babijczuk, a former jumper and decathlete, is well acquainted with strength and power, as is Quinn through his sprint coaching.
Babijczuk believes that Hawthorn is both leaner and stronger this year. The two are not contradictory.
"We're leaner and fitter, but we're going stronger. We're going power, but not necessarily bulk."
Citing the weights that some of the players are pushing in the gym, Babijczuk says that Hawthorn's aim is total strength. "In the old days, people looked bigger (when they pumped up the gym work). Now it's more symmetrical, we work on the total body.
"I don't know if they look bigger, but they are."
Bomber duo the perfect specimens
Essendon premiership duo Justin Blumfield and Chris Heffernan are the prototypes of the ideal player for the 21st Century, says Robert Walls.
The Carlton premiership coach and Age columnist praises the versatility of the duo. Heffernan, 186 centimetres tall and weighing 83 kilograms, and Blumfield, 188/84, have the pace to play on-ball and can take a key position at a pinch.
"They're agile, quick and can match anyone in a dash for the football," Walls said, "and they can run all day."
Walls said his personal opinion was that players could get over-motivated with strength work, building themselves up too much. "I've seen it happen a lot over many years. The gym takes control and the love of the body."
Against that, AFL clubs now had professional gym instructors and worked players in the gym in small groups. "There's no more hiding behind the pillars, like you used to be able to with 25 blokes there."
Strength and agility were increasingly important, Walls said, with the ball hitting the ground in three out of every four contests and players now subjected to physical pressure every time they were in a contest.
"I reckon 25 years ago, when I got the footy, three out of four times no-one touched me. Now, it's the other way round and there's impact three out of every four contests." - LEN JOHNSON
© 2001 The Age