We’ve got a fairly mature team now - I’m confident that we can play at our level for the entirety of the season. We probably haven’t seen the really bad fade outs for several years. 2013 we did lose the last few games badly but that was at least in part due to being kicked out of finals. It was still nothing compared to 2011/2012.
Its clear the focus for our team is being able to sustain effort for entire games and not just have brilliant quarters within games but not be able to play at the required level for the whole game. Case in point: Our final vs North. We are good enough at our best but we are not at our best long enough to win the games against the best teams.
It also comes back to depth as well. We know that players like Fletcher, Chapman and Winderlich will not be playing 22 games. We need some of our younger guys and depth players ready to step up when required. Also our preseason injury list is pretty long right now - it remains to be seen what impact that will have. There are some key players that have missed a lot of time - eg Carlisle/Hocking so that could be a problem too.
If we are training to coast through the season so we aren't run down at the end then we won't win many games, but at least we'll be the freshest team going on early holidays in September.
To use your analogy, if you had to race 5km once a week for 22 weeks in a row, would your training be consistant with that of a 5km racer or a marathon runner? And keep in mind that there’s no points for 2nd place each week in AFL.
Well, this is the problem with analogies, isn’t it? The closest thing to reality is - reality.
So you can take my analogy and skew it how you will, and it will sound ridiculous.
I believe it was more mindset than physical last year.
We could have put more closer games away by halftime.
Daniher and Buckets will be better for the run in the forwardline last year and show further improvement.
Our fitness base will be that of most clubs this year as Port showed what needs to be done, also throw the Gold Coast in with their speed and ball movement.