Memo to clubs: Stop shutting fans out
Bruce Matthews | July 04, 2008
ANOTHER football tradition is just about dead.
Fans are no longer encouraged to watch their clubs train. In fact, they are bluntly discouraged by the increasing number of closed sessions.
School holidays - let's take the kids for a kick and check out those names who keep bobbing up in the VFL's best players. Fat chance if you are looking for your club's training sessions.
If it's not closeted in secrecy, there is every likelihood it will take you twice as long to get there than the time your heroes will spend out on the ground.
Clubs like Hawthorn and Geelong "generously" open up their last training session of the week, generally a Friday, to the public.
Trouble is it lasts no more than half an hour. A handful of ball drills, a few shots on goal, five minutes of autograph-signing and the players are gone.
Sure, most clubs are on a break this week for the split round. And Carlton and St Kilda did conduct clinics. But pity if you follow Collingwood or Geelong.
Collingwood's main session on Wednesday was closed after the 15-minute warm-up (as much as you can train in private with traffic zooming past on Punt Rd) and Geelong had a run yesterday . . . in Adelaide.
School's out again next week. Still, you can bet few fans will get to see their favourite players preparing for the next round.
Yes, we understand the physical demands of the modern game, particularly three months into the season, preclude the old midweek match-practice flogging.
There will continue to be stay-away-in-case-you-spot-something closed sessions.
This ridiculous practice is a direct snub to fans, many who for various reasons, be it family, professional or economic, can't get to the weekend games and still want to maintain some sort of tenuous link with their players and club.
Don't tell me with just about every player now full-time that coaching staff couldn't find a quiet time, early morning, late afternoon, even lunchtime, to work on game-day strategies away from prying eyes.
These set plays invariably involve only groups of onballers or the backline unit rather than the entire senior list anyway.
And the folly of all this subterfuge is that their opponents that week generally know exactly who is carrying what injuries and who will or won't be fronting up against them.
There's certainly no sausage sizzles on the terraces to grab a snag and watch the boys train at this time of the season.
Perhaps, to be blatantly cynical, it's because the deadline for memberships has expired.
Fan-friendly tactics won't reappear until next summer when the marketing manipulators go chasing those membership commitments that the AFL tells us is the lifeblood of the clubs and competition.
The AFL has a rule that each senior coach must speak publicly at least once a week.
Maybe they could extend that edict to one open and advertised training run too.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/sport/afl/story/0,26576,23965981-19742,00.html
