Two Coaches & a Coffee
With nearly 60years of professional experience between them across the world in Premier League, International Rugby, AFL and consulting in a plethora of other sports and industries; two old bulls of the performance, injury prevention, and rehabilitation world: Darren Burgess and Jason Weber catch up over a brew and discuss all things Sports Performance.
Two Coaches & a Coffee
Season 2, Episode 10
Ever wondered who's really at the helm when it comes to managing the wellbeing of top-tier athletes? Alongside the esteemed Darren Burgess, we peel back the curtain on the behind-the-scenes drama and the intricate tapestry of responsibilities that high-performance teams juggle in the AFL. Facing a storm of injuries and public scrutiny, we candidly share the heat that comes with the territory and argue the case for broader accountability, extending from the locker room to the coach's clipboard.
Let's talk about the unseen hurdles in sports performance — like that time an athlete's clandestine activities off the pitch threw us a curveball. We lay bare the complexities of managing elite sportspeople, balancing the scales between athlete autonomy and the structured discipline necessary for peak performance. Our stories from the trenches reveal just how crucial it is to invite fresh perspectives and the edge it gives in staying ahead of the game.
With the sports science landscape constantly shifting beneath our feet, we reflect on how trends in the EPL and college football are informing our approach here in AFL. I share my experiences in fostering talent within the team, coaching a PhD student to become a crucial pivot in our strategy. As we sign off, we muse about the essential ingredients for a thriving workplace culture, and yes, tease your palate with the promise of future coffee adventures — because what's a good chat without a great brew, right? Join us for this riveting exploration of sports, science, and the human element that binds them.
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G'day. I'm Jason Webber and this is Darren Burgess, and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee. We've got a slightly different venue today. Darren's reclining on his lounge. Kick him back. I'm hard at work, as usual. But, berger, there's been a bit of action in the AFL in the last let's say the last sort of 14 days. A whole bunch of injuries have come about. What's your take, mate? Let the world know what's going on, given that everybody's not AFL-centric.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess what people who listen overseas or watch overseas might not realise is the scrutiny that comes under AFL clubs, coaches, high-performance staff and players, certainly around performance, and we're five games or five rounds into the season and because there's more journos than players believe it or not in the afl, which, um, those overseas would would struggle to comprehend.
Speaker 2:We might have mentioned that before, but, um, so everything is under scrutiny, so it really makes everybody accountable, but often unjustly so. So at moment there's a couple of clubs that are going through so-called injury crisis and you have to publish accurate injury data, which you do in some other leagues as well. So there's a lot of commentary both from media and, you know, social media on clubs who are currently got, you know, reasonable injury rates, and we've all been there, we've all been in those positions and I've no doubt I'll be in those positions again, whether it's this year or next year, where you just go through a slate of injuries. But I think it's really unfair to pin it all on the high performance department because, as we know, and you've mentioned once or twice on this podcast before, there's just a whole gamut of reasons why injuries occur, most of which, by the way, we don't understand.
Speaker 1:Many, we don't, I agree.
Speaker 2:There's things that we can measure, and I don't want to get into that debate again because everybody who's listening to this podcast is, I'm certain, of the same.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, they're on the same mentality of us, that you know, we can only measure a few things, so that doesn't mean that they're the causes of injury, no, but I think it's just really interesting that high performance teams are copying it a bit at the moment, and it's not absolutely not always their fault. Sometimes it can be. I've certainly made mistakes in the past, and probably we all have, but it's just, yeah, there's been a lot of I'm talking mainstream media, even the AFL website, where they're saying you know, darren Bird is under pressure or Jason Weber under pressure because of injuries at you know wherever. It's interesting what you all thought. You've been through it, mate, I copped it because of your injuries at you know wherever. Yeah, it's interesting what your thoughts.
Speaker 1:You've been through it, mate, I copped it Mate it's worthwhile from the experience perspective for listeners to understand. So my contract ended with Fremantle Football Club in 2020 and basically it was dragged out and clearly we went through the whole COVID thing, but basically I just wasn't re-signed. But I got thrown under the bus that all the injuries were my fault, but in fact we had one soft tissue injury and all the other injuries were ankles, syndesmosis, collision. I got blamed for one kid who was jumping ludicrously on a bag In AFL you can practice jumping up onto people's backs and he'd come off the bag and blew his ankle up and couldn't play. But apparently that was my fault. Now that's darren's thing. Like we get hauled out in the media because you're the high performance guy which, as many would know, is a name I hate for our role. But what's really interesting, like, given like there's at least two teams in the afl that are in soft tissue threat, like they've got a lot of injuries hamstrings and quads are the predominant. I'm going to throw it back a little bit on the coaches because, like there's a lot we can do, like we can measure and we can. We can, we can intervene in a lot of areas, but at the end of the day, if you look at the most high-value component, that is, training right, people can go overboard in games and, yes, we've got to condition them for worst case.
Speaker 1:But I was at a presentation in the US in January at a conference and there was a guy working in the nfl, a guy I know quite well. He was talking about his experiences meeting coaches across the world and he spoke about one coach in particular with whom I have a lot of experience. But he was talking about the implementation of tactical periodization and how important it is and how. This guy was an expert and I'm going to tell you this without a shadow of a doubt and I'm happy to bring out proof at any point. But this coach, as good as he was, set a plan but then on the field, made decisions to go so far, past the point, that he'd said that players got injured. Now, that wasn't my fault. That wasn't anybody's fault other than the coach going too far. Now, in 20, nearly 30 years, I've seen this over and over again. We set a plan, whether the coach sets it, or we came to it collaboratively. However, it happened, but the coach goes.
Speaker 1:You know what? I'm not happy with this or I'm getting emotional because it's goes. You know what I'm not happy with this, or I'm getting emotional because it's an emotional part of the year. We're going this far and, while you might sustain it for one week or two weeks again, I've got plenty of data to suggest that that, much like what has been published, you get to three and four weeks of this. We're talking 15, 20% overboard and pop, pop, pop. This we're talking 15, 20% overboard and pop, pop, pop, pop, pop sequence goes. So it's really interesting and it'd be something that I'd love to hear coaches talk about. Is they go? Oh, it was the captain's call. That's a big one in Australia. It was captain's call or it's my executive decision? Well, yeah, it is your executive decision, but and I'm more than happy if you get fired for it, but unfortunately there are other staff members that do cop it quite regularly- and I mean, that's not even to make comment on what players are doing away from the three to five hours that we might get them to do.
Speaker 2:But yeah, it's just an interesting narrative and it makes stories and, um, you know, it can work for you if you, um, as you know, if you win a last quarter and you might win a few in a row, and so, yeah, you're the fitness guru yeah, when, when there's a whole range of things that contribute to that as well.
Speaker 2:So, um, it can work for you, but it certainly can work against. It's a bit like for the people listening over in Europe, the Premier League. When they change a manager in any division, it doesn't have to be Premier League and the manager. First thing they come in and do is put players through a rigorous training session that would exhaust the fittest players on the planet, but they deliberately make it hard and then they go oh look, they're not fit. Look at them, look at them. Look at them. They're all haunched over, they're all breathing heavily. They're not fit. So you know and that's a great narrative to be able to sell it means buy me some more time, give me some more time, because the previous manager had no idea what they were doing Of course they did, of course they did.
Speaker 2:It's an interesting one, but how you navigate that and, having been through it, I remember at a previous club we had three hamstrings in two days for three incredibly important players and I was straight, despite three years of impeccable injury record.
Speaker 2:The following Wednesday night I was straight before the board injury record the following Wednesday and I was straight before the board and um, you know. So what that does is it means that you know it rams home the uh temporary nature of your um, you know of your position and the sort of lack of trust it also rams on the accountability, which is okay and that's something we all sign up for. Um, but the really um, the thing that I learned during that process was stick to your process and if, as long as you're, obviously, if it repeats a lot, then you might have a few issues. But if you could control what you can control in your environment, um and I've said it before and I'll say it again on this podcast um, have the mindset of what happens if. What would it look like if I came and audited this club?
Speaker 2:always agree if I came and audited my career, then what would it look like? Are we ticking off all of the you know, research, evidence-based factors? I contribute that we know about Tick, tick, tick, tick. Okay, we're good 100%.
Speaker 1:I couldn't agree more, mate. I'm the same. I always look at my environment from a third-person perspective. If I was reviewing this, what would people say? And in fact, over time, you know how you're in a performance environment and you get people visit. So I would have people visit when I was back in the afl and I would say, okay, you can come, but you've got to pay, and your payment is, you can come, you can have a look around, I'll show you everything, but at the end of it, you've got to review it to me yeah, nice and you've got to come and say what you liked, what you didn't like.
Speaker 1:Now I got to take it on back. But it's feedback, right, it's an external review you get for free and I think that's a valuable. I found that extremely valuable. And there's a few guys who I'm now still quite good friends with, who couldn't believe that I was saying I want you to review me, review what I do, review everything. And they were shocked and I said, well, it's not a humility piece, but it's a practicality. Like, if you assume that you know everything, then you're screwed. But if you assume that, okay, I'm doing a good job and it's okay, but what can I improve on? You maybe can't see the forest through the trees.
Speaker 2:And I think that happens when you're involved in it within a culture. Um, so you're just involved in, in, you know, your afl club and say no it's coach's fault. No, it's this fault.
Speaker 1:And you need to have a chance to I'm gonna mate, I'm gonna steer this another way, a little bit like you, you quite often talk about, you know, maintaining process, which I couldn't agree with more. I think it's fantastic, but clearly I've, quite with the speed thing. I've quite often spoken about the need to try and investigate other things, try and figure out what we don't know. Now here's one. Here's just a little horror story, right, and I don't. This isn't a solution, but maybe it's something for people who are in the gig anywhere to be aware of. So you talked about what players do. So I had a player who was extremely important, high value, high value player who had a string of injuries. Now the string of those injuries dated back to an injury that he had before he even got drafted into AFL. So it was like this had this cork hematoma in his thigh that had calcified by the time he was 16. So he comes to the AFL and he got an innocuous scan on his groin early in his career and we found this thing and he was like there's this body, but for 10 years nothing went wrong. But then he has a knee injury and the knee injury unravels and so this calcification becomes an issue. Anyway, long story, but this kid at one point has this calf injury, this low-grade, so we're rehabbing it. Going through all the process and everyone's on like my staff were on exactly what reps, what distances, everything was calculated. We were looking at the structure of days. Anyway, the kid finishes training on like a Wednesday, no problem. Has Thursday off and he's coming back Friday. So we're all planned up. Yep, we're going to go again, we're getting ready to play. Comes back in on the Friday, we expect, right. So we had a lower intensity day on the Wednesday. Friday was going to be up. He comes back in and he's I don't know 15, 20 minutes into the session. I can feel my calf. Anyway, shit hits the fan. Done Scan, it's gone, again Low grade, and we're like pulling our hair out. And I've got no hair to pull anyway, right, but we're like pulling our hair out. I've got no hair to pull anyway, right, but we're pulling our hair out. Anyway, long story short, the kid's done the right thing. He's had the day off. He's gone and tried to do some recovery stuff, but he's decided that he would go boogie board surfing.
Speaker 1:So in Australia, like in America as well, but you get the short board, but on your back, on your legs you've got flippers, but you get the short board, but on your back, on your legs, you've got flippers. So you're kicking and so we're digging into this. And the coach was into me what have you done? What have you done? You've created this. You can't do your job and I'm like man, we've measured everything.
Speaker 1:Anyway, you start quizzing the athlete and the athlete goes oh yeah, I went for a surf. I'm like, okay. And so I'm thinking, because I grew up stand-up surfing, yeah, it doesn't seem like much, but yeah, oh, no, boogie board, right, and did you wear flippers? Yes, how long were you out for? Oh, two and a half hours. When was the last time you did that? Oh, I haven't done it for maybe a year. And I'm like righto, so we have a calf that's already on the edge. We're allowing it 48 hours to recover. In that time he does something that loads the calves up quite a bit. He comes in and does that. Now, I reported it back to the hierarchy. Didn't matter, it's ridiculous. You're drawing and I'm like how else explain it, mate? Like the kid was fine, Everything was going great. So that's a horror story about stuff you can't control and you're never going to be able to control everything? They do? Not at all.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's, yeah, it's something that you can't factor in and you're just hoping and you go through education, oh mate. But on the same token and we've spoken about this before I don't want to stop people from going surfing, boarding or anything like that, but when you've got a highly sort of high-risk athlete, Neither do I.
Speaker 1:But it's interesting, mate. The reality probably is of that athlete at that time was that he was so far down the path of he'd had this issue then that issue and training volumes had got smaller and smaller. I don't think it was something we were ever going to recover, but that's just what happens.
Speaker 1:Mate, just while we're kind of we've had a crack at that injury thing, but with respect to you know we've said two AFL teams are struggling with soft tissue, my quick question to you about is game speed. Has the game changed this year? What are you doing to have a look at that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we just look at the player speeds and you know from GPS and just going through that it doesn't look like it has massively compared to the last sort of four or five years of data.
Speaker 2:What I suspect will happen, though, is what I suspect is happening is you're going from defence to offence quicker, I know, is you're going from defence to offence quicker, I think, whilst the game speed as an average speed hasn't changed, the explosiveness has, so the sprinting volumes has probably gone up or has likely gone up. So I suspect what that means is yeah, the real emphasis within AFL is that transition is how quickly you can get a turnover and attack, as it is in a lot of sports, but it probably hasn't been as influential or as critical in AFL as what it has in some other sports. So your ability to go at an opposition when they've got the ball, when they're least prepared to defend, is massive. So I think that that's probably where there's been a lot of reacting to high speed. You know, high velocity running. That hasn't been there before. That'd be my best guess five, six rounds in.
Speaker 1:Mate, did you see in your time in the EPL and any experiences with people in the EPL at the moment? Does EPL change much? Yeah, it does.
Speaker 2:It's changed massively and there's some decent research around that. But certainly the average and max velocity bands or high velocity bands has gone up remarkably in the last four or five years, let alone the last 15, 20.
Speaker 1:Mate, it's interesting talking to college football guys in the last four or five years, let alone the last 15, 20. Mate, it's interesting talking to college football guys in the US and talking about the number of reps that they're doing in offence. That's one thing. They clearly have a defensive metric for the same thing. But just looking at the number of reps and that some teams that are playing up-tempo offences that are really dictating, hey, we're going to try and do more reps, force the defence to do more and get things moving faster.
Speaker 1:But it is a remarkable thing and maybe something people should be constantly evaluating is not just your environment, but making sure you're seeing the trends of the game, hopefully in the next couple of weeks, where I'll be publishing with one of my former PhD students some trends that we got in the AFL, using different AI technology to build them out. But I think we've talked before about staffing and what do your staff do and where's your vision? I think, from that high-performance manager's perspective, I think the ability to sit back a little bit and this is what staff allows you to sit back and be able to look at the minutiae, the trees within your team, but then sit back and look at the forest and see what else is happening in the game is critical. And then I guess it brings me to the point is what staff have you got to be able to help you do that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a really interesting one and I'll finish on this because I want your advice on it really, if I can.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was having a conversation yesterday with someone around how many times I've kind of had to go into a place and reorganise staff or reshuffle staff. It's that good person versus good skills debate, and by that I mean, okay, you've got a really talented strength coach, let's say, let's use sports scientists. You've got a head of sports scientists who has sports scientists, who's really good, talented, but you've got a junior in there who is we've spoken about the ability to code and the ability to see a little bit of a bigger picture in that space. But the head of sports science is a really good person, so you want to keep him around. He's got some skill set in the gym, but you really want to promote that young person up. Can you reshuffle them into a different position? Or is it better just to promote that person who's eager and keen? And you know, I like to think that you keep good people around. Yeah, yeah, that would be, my way of doing it.
Speaker 1:It's interesting, matt, I was actually I've got a young coach I mentor and I was working with him this morning and it's Smartcat. But anyway, he was asking me about stuff and I said well, I said I have a very clear picture in my head, so I talk about models all the time, like you've got to have a framework principles. I did a podcast on it the other day when you were away. I did a podcast on this to try and fill the gap, but I think it's like episode. This must be episode 10. It was probably episode seven or eight, anyway.
Speaker 1:So my principle around department is I have an idea of what I want, of the people I want in it, subject to volume. So if I've got an idea for, like, a staff that had 10 in it versus eight, versus six versus three, what would you do? Who would you pick? That had 10 in it versus eight, versus six versus three, what would you do? Who would you pick? I think, without question, the number one is that every executive leadership book talks about. You've got to have the right people, no question.
Speaker 1:That being said, I'm going to say something a little bit horrible. Some people might say it, but I'm going to say it anyway, right? I often think of professional, professional people as mechanisms, right? So what mechanism do you fit in, the machine that makes this whole thing work? So what is your role? Now, some people I've had coaches work for me who were very skilled in one specific area but not much else. But I brought them on anyway because they did that and they did that thing so well that I made allowances in our model, in our system, for all the other bits and pieces, because that gave us an advantage. I valued that advantage. Now I have other staff members. Let's say, in my last 15 years I've probably had three guys work with me who were I've mentioned them before on this podcast but three guys work with me who are unbelievable all-rounders and they were just rock solid.
Speaker 1:They did development, they did rehab, they ran senior positions, so I think you've got to mix it up.
Speaker 1:when it comes to sports scientists, I've got a real bent yes because I think if you're going to worry, if you're going to wear the sports science badge, you've got to bring some firepower. I cannot rationalize sports scientists who download gps data and that's really all they do, like. I'm looking for people who can really start to define pictures. So the guy who we're going to publish with soon about the AFL patterns he did his PhD with me but when he came in he was really awkward. He was really quiet, he didn't fit too well, but we nurtured him. I nurtured him personally and got him through and and he was great, fantastic, but very, very smart, but very, very analytical. He was actually a very good running coach. He just wasn't very good in the environment, but we nurtured him through the, the the environment, and got him in and protected him at different points. But I think the point is you've got to define a. Is this person going to complement the skills that you need?
Speaker 1:yep what do they bring? But they've got to be good people. They can be quiet people they can be. I've got a. I've got a sports science, a genuine phd in biomechanics, in biomechanics from one of the big tech universities in Germany. When she came and worked with me she didn't speak to anybody, she was so quiet. But you nurture her along and turns out she's a former 400-meter sprinter, so she really understands running and ran at a high level. Now is an elite bike rider, but brilliant. But sometimes it takes. You've got to see potential in people and you've got to see, I think, my opinion. You've got to look for some skills that go beyond what you've already got.
Speaker 1:I think generous, like I'm a generalist mate. I am a generalist. I've worked with some great generalists. But I think then, as a leader, though, if you can look for people that can ratchet up and turn up a notch, who can look at game styles, who can? We were pulling data. So one of the keys, I think let's say in AFL, is you can understand yourself, but understand the opposition. Sun Tzu, the art of war Know thyself, know thy enemy, Win a thousand battles. So what we're going to publish, our AI paper was about detecting and quantifying opposition team running based on what was published publicly. Yeah, okay, about detecting and quantifying opposition team running based on what was published publicly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:But I couldn't have done that. I knew what we were trying to do and I had the idea. But my sports scientist, who was a genuine gun, did his normal GPS work, but on the side we built this AI system that could detect other teams and build patterns. So I knew, game to game, what the opposition ran versus us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's interesting that we've brought in an honours student who has got no domain knowledge whatsoever, yeah, but she's been able to do some things that I've not seen because she comes straight from a mathematics data. So, yeah, the ability to combine the two, I think, is pretty important and, yeah, that's where it's heading. So it's just up to more general, traditionally educated sports scientists to upskill themselves, isn't it really?
Speaker 1:Correct. Well, it's again. If you're going to wear the scientist badge, I think you need to be bringing some firepower. I mean, if you had two roles and one of them is you're the GPS guy and you do all that great. Yeah, if you had two roles and one of them is you're the GPS guy and you do all that great. But my scientist would be like a friend of ours named Brains. Like I want that person, girl or guy, to be looking at patterns and looking at other structures and coming to me and saying, hey, jase, I've seen this thing, what do you think?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because as the boss boss you can't see everything you can't. You're often manipulating people around.
Speaker 2:You're moving, you're working with the coaches, so having those cats is important yeah, you've just got to be curious enough to explore it yourself and then come in and say listen, I was just having a look last night and I saw this what do you think? Or yesterday, yesterday, or you know all that, so I agree, it's just that technical versus character debate.
Speaker 1:Oh, they've always got to have character mate. You cannot hire Like I tell you what man my SpeedSigs. Company values are honesty and creativity, that's it. So honesty states straight up you've got to be a real person, you can't be a. Hey, I spoke to someone the other day the same thing. No dick policy. You can't work with dicks. You've got to work with people that genuinely, every day, you're going to enjoy coming to work and spend time with them, because we spend more of our life at work than we do anywhere else. Big truck going by.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%.
Speaker 1:So you've got to work with good people. Anyway, mate, listen, I know you are pressed for time and our day is rapidly dwindling, so, man, I appreciate your time. We we need to next one out.
Speaker 2:We're probably gonna do another coffee review or a bit behind on that yeah, yeah, actually, I've just just uh transformed, transformed or transferred to a new coffee, so let's do it. I look forward to it.
Speaker 1:All right, mate, great chatting and we will speak real soon again.
Speaker 2:Ciao, mate.