Barry Mitchell had an extensive career as a midfielder, playing 221 games for the Sydney Swans, Carlton and Collingwood. Mitchell returned to Carlton in 2003 and served as an assistant coach for five seasons before he was appointed the coach of Hawthorn’s VFL affiliate, Box Hill, in 2008. Earlier this year Mitchell headed west to take up a position as an assistant coach at Fremantle. 

How do the fitness requirements of midfielders change throughout the season? -Ahmed Elsouki
A lot of the volume of running is done in the pre-season, so our guys will do up to five running sessions a week. Some of that running incorporates how we want to play with our game plan, how we want to move the ball and the running pattern of players. Some of the other running will be volume running to get their fitness up and the bulk of the work is done through the pre-season to get the guys ready for the season.

In season, a lot of the guys are running up to 15 kilometres in a game of varying pace; some sprinting, cruising and jogging. That workout in itself is enough to maintain fitness but obviously during the week we’ll do at least one longer session probably about an 80 minute session when they top up their fitness. A lot of the work now during the season is getting players to recover from game to game. As the intensity of the game has gone to such great heights, the players spend the early part of the week getting themselves recovered and ready to go for the main training session and then for the following game.

The only other thing that needs to be considered is the travel element. Obviously we have to travel 11 times a year from Perth and the travel is more often than not to Melbourne, which is a four hour flight. So losing a day of being able to train and prepare for games is a bit of a hurdle but it’s just another factor that we face.

The centre square zone was bought in to stop overcrowding around ball-ups after a goal. Do you see any merit in dividing the ground into three zones and forcing teams to have six players in each zone, thereby forcing a more contested game? – Dan, West Coast Eagles Member
I don’t know that it would force more contested football. It would make the game a lot more difficult to officiate as you would probably need umpires in each zone. I think it would be too complicated for our free flowing game and having said that, the contests in modern footy are probably just as tough as they’ve ever been. The players are fitter, stronger and you only have to take a look at some of the collisions that take place and look at how hard the players go for the ball to see the contested element is still strong.

In the modern game a player will quite frequently be rotated or benched almost immediately after kicking a goal, even if they are having a decent quarter. What is the logic behind this? – Jonny
Different teams have different ways that they rotate their players. Often the best time to rotate a player is after a goal because the ball is out of play and players are given a better opportunity to get on and off the ground. It’s not that they are getting taken off the ground for kicking a goal; it’s just the best time to take players on and off the ground.

Some teams have pre-set rotations. At a certain time in the quarter a player will come off, so if a guy kicked a goal or point near that time he may be rotated then. We see that the numbers of interchange rotations in games have increased and that’s to keep the players fresh and also helps to keep the speed of the game up.

EMAIL YOUR QUESTIONS
Do you have something you’ve always wanted to ask a coach? Drop the coaches an email at coachsbox@afl.com.au. Each week, one assistant coach from an AFL club will dip into the mailbag and answer a handful of the best questions.

The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL.