Two Coaches & a Coffee

Surging to Victory: Late-Season Tactics and other Observations

• Darren Burgess & Jason Weber • Season 2 • Episode 26

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What if your team's late-season surge could be the key to clinching a top spot? This week on Two Coaches and a Coffee, we promise to unravel the secrets behind the Hawthorne Hawks' unexpected rise and explore the crucial tactics that are shaping the AFL's final round. From high-speed sprints to strategic player management, we dig into the game data and decision-making that are keeping fans on the edge of their seats. We'll also shift gears to the EPL, where Manchester City's methodical approach has set the stage for a standout performance by a 19-year-old phenom. Don't miss our in-depth analysis of how top teams balance immediate impact with long-term planning.

In the second half, we tackle a complex yet vital topic: balancing risk aversion with performance training. Are teams getting it right with their training loads and strategies? We scrutinize the roles of medical staff and strength and conditioning coaches, diving into the ongoing debate around chronic acute work ratios. Learn how different philosophies shape team performance, with real-world examples from the AFL illustrating the fine line between maintaining player freshness and building fitness. This episode will leave you questioning conventional wisdom and considering new metrics to keep athletes at their peak all season long. Tune in for a compelling blend of data analysis, expert opinions, and practical insights from top-tier sports.

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Jason Weber:

Good night and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee, and unfortunately, we're back to one coach and a coffee. I'm back on the road again and Darren's just finishing up AFL, so our time zones are not lining up. So our time zones are not lining up. So, that being said, what I'd like to share with you in this episode is a bit about my week. I've had a big week talking to a lot of people across a lot of different sports, and there's a couple of trends emerging and a couple of things that I think are probably somewhat disturbing and that people listening to this may find themselves in one camp or another. So I'm just going to go with sharing a couple of conversations and observations, really, that have come through this week. So let's start with the AFL. So the AFL this weekend. It's the last round of the AFL and the top eight will go through to the finals and start the finals over the next month. Now, the top eight are very, very tightly positioned this year on competition points on the ladder, so there's a lot happening. This last round, equally, there were, uh, very big dead rubbers, which you would might be calling tennis. When you play a game, that just does not mean anything. So neither team will succeed. They either won't both, both can't make the finals, or one team's already got their position locked in and and yeah, the game doesn't mean a whole lot. But in the same breath we saw one of our young teams, a team called the Hawthorne. The Hawks played exceptionally well, ran up a really high score, secured their finals berth, and they're a team that beginning of the year really were not slated to do anything, probably not going to make the finals but have in the last couple of months really really come home very, very hard and running exceptionally hard, which is part of the story. So they're doing a great job and they certainly ran out.

Jason Weber:

And when I was looking at some of the game data I saw today and it's not all absolute, but the nature of any data is it's fundamentally breadcrumbs All right, so you want to get as many different types of breadcrumbs as you can to try and figure out the trail and solve the problem, so to speak. So some of the data I was looking at today showed that Hawthorne's number of sprints for their team, so number of high speed executions and sprints would only occur when you're near the ball or pressuring for the ball. You don't sprint when you're out of the game and you're just maneuvering for position. So fundamentally, they've got a lot of people going and they were really high. Um, so such an absolute level. They were high, but they were also. Their differential was more than 19 to their opponent, which was was massive at that level. Um, you know you're almost guaranteeing that that level of physical dominance would suggest, yeah, you're going to win because other features of the game will go with it.

Jason Weber:

Understanding that normally in afl a winning team is around about 6% to 8% for sprint above and not always it can flip the other way. The best team might not sprint, but in general, that's just an observation I've made over time. I do some tracking around that data to keep an eye on the league and what's going on. So that's kind of one little story keep an eye on the league and what's going on. So that's kind of one little story.

Jason Weber:

But what I've already let probably loose a little bit there is you've got a team that started out slow beginning of the year and have come home really, really strong. Now what we've seen in the AFL this year is in the top eight because it's been so tight. We've seen a lot of big changes, like teams going from second and third out of the eight within three to four weeks because it's so tight. But what we've also seen this year right is a number of very good teams go on losing streaks of around about four or five games. So you've got teams that maybe started the year really fast and there's one team in particular that did that got five games on the trot from the beginning of the season and were looking like, you know, maybe they weren't going to lose, but of course then they went into it. They ended up going into quite a large slump and then come back again, and this is leading down a path. Equally, you've got other teams that went out really well. First half of the year they're looking like champions and then the end of the year there's been lots of injuries and results have really really gone against them.

Jason Weber:

So you can start to see the thread that I'm pulling here and that is that what's the programming like going on in season? I think it's safe to say that, coming out of the pre-season period for AFL, which is generally quite long relative to other sports, but it can be around about 15 weeks for the teams that don't make finals and a little bit shorter for those that do, but we probably had everybody up and going early in the year. But then there's been these big ebbs and flows and there's some stories going around about how teams were managed and I'll just flick now because I'm going to talk about AFL the whole time, but this connects to a couple of other threads. So we've now got I'm pretty sure it's in the last week I saw in the epl manchester city, pep guardiola has come out and said that man city, who are the current epl champions and one of the best teams, football teams in the world, um, he's saying they will be late, meaning they will be late within the season. They're going to start slow because they've got a lot of players that come out of Euros and all the rest of it, international players that he's given extended breaks to, and they're not into the season yet. And he's playing I don't know the name I apologize to those who are more football fanatics than I, but he's playing a 19-year-old player at the moment who apparently has been awesome I mean 19 in the EPL. That's just magnificent. So I mean you've got a coach of enormous pedigree there saying, hey, we're going to be late, we're going to ease our players in. We're going to come home strong. Now no one's made that call in the AFL, but that's clearly what appears to have happened with a couple of teams.

Jason Weber:

Now, if I take this a little bit further afield this theme, before I start to bring it together, I've had a number of conversations, not only this week but certainly over the last couple of months, not only this week but certainly over the last couple of months, through the NFL and US college football, a very, very highly rated college football teams, and there are teams that are looking like they're a bit short of work. They haven't done enough, they haven't had enough through spring ball. They've protected some players and there's people that have said to me we think we're going in underdone. Now we'll get to that in a moment. Some people in those spaces are particularly risk averse. But I also know that there are other teams in that American football, both NFL and college football, that have radically changed their planning in order to ensure that their spring camps and their camps leading into competition, which are notoriously very, very demanding times and very big jumps in load for players. I know teams that have taken steps to manage that and have really. I know one team in particular. It's already spoken to me this week that they actually had two contact ACLs in the camp, which is unfortunate and maybe unavoidable given the nature of the contact. They had one other two other probably, I think they had one ankle and maybe a hamstring, but pretty low level compared to some other teams and they're really happy they've come out with a body of work that their coaching team feel is more than they've done before, with less impact on the players or less damage. Let's put it that way.

Jason Weber:

The theme I'm trying to get to and what I've been thinking about is really this balance of risk aversion versus training for performance. Now, some will say that risk-averse programs are often driven by medical staff. I think it's probably a gross generalization, that's unfair but nonetheless that's out there versus training for performance. Now, we certainly know that some S&C coaches can get out of control with the best of them. So there's possibly a downside to going too far that way as well.

Jason Weber:

But if we bring it back to research and I know the work the chronic acute work ratios have copped a beating over times, but philosophically it does. You know, it's all Tim Gabbitt's work and I know Tim's a practitioner. He's not a straight academic. He came out of rugby league a very experienced man. The chronic acute work ratio subject has copped a beating over time and, I've got to admit, with some mathematical components here. It probably warranted a beating at times, but I still philosophically think it bears some good information that we need to understand. So do we understand where our chronic ratios need to be, where our level of exposure to training load needs to be for certain players or for a given group of sport rather than certain players?

Jason Weber:

And are we getting there Right? Because I feel like what we're seeing at the moment is some teams that are going in underdone and equally some teams then getting in season and trying to play it safe for a long period of time. Now again, if I flip back to the AFL example, there are teams that have crashed in the last quarter of the main season, going into finals, and they are playing for their lives this weekend and going down to the last three games tomorrow, sunday. There are teams that are playing for a spot in the finals, playing for their lives, which we all know, for some might be playing for their jobs, both players and staff. So what we've seen is some people sort of think well, are there times of the year where we can really back off and we'll just roll this in and we'll stay fresh and the term fresh meaning every game we're going in lightning, whereas I can guarantee that we've seen some teams this year lose and I've got to wonder and I do more wonder.

Jason Weber:

I do know for a fact from some teams, but I think there are some teams that say, okay, this is a relatively safe time of year. We're going to put in the extra work, we're going to do more work and we're going to bank some more work and we're going to be fit and strong. Now, if we go into games a little bit flat and they lose, maybe it's like Pep Guardiola saying we're going to be late. We acknowledge we're going to lose a couple here. Possibly we might not be at our best. We're going to try and limit. I know Coach Guardiola says he wants to limit the points lost, so he's going to limit his point differential and all that sort of thing. So I don't think anyone's ever going out to lose, but acknowledging that where we might have been more dominant, we may not be, because I can tell you now there's teams that have gone through that possibly safe time of year and they're flying now and I mean, at the end of the day, really no one cares who was on the front page of the paper in round 10, thinking they might be a chance when those teams are now in eighth and 10th position, fighting, fighting to get their position.

Jason Weber:

So here's my questions. Right, and unfortunately I'm not going to offer answers to everybody, but I think here's the question. My question is are we assessing the correct information? So at some point, either somebody saying, hey, we're just going to not train because we want to keep our people fresh and I want to look like I've got people on the field. To look like I've got people on the field, that's okay, but if they go on the field and they don't play any good, then we're going to get lampooned in our job anyway or maybe harpooned.

Jason Weber:

So are we looking at the right information? Is it enough just to look at volumes? Is there enough? I know in AFL I've seen people work, coaches work off total sessions that we need to have. Let's say, 30 sessions for the summer. We need 30 team sessions. Done that, if I get 30 team sessions, I know I'm confident we're going to go well. And in that 30 team sessions, then I need to know how many players of that the high percentage have completed more than 75%. That was an AFL coach that I worked with, so he had a very strong structure as to what preceded success.

Jason Weber:

So there are those type of metrics. There are metrics also like understanding that chronic work, like how much work have we got in the bank and how long have we held that volume of work? And is that volume of work consistent with what we did last year or this year, you know? And what have other teams done where possible? If you can know that? But I think that it extends to in-season. It's not enough and I don't rate this at all to jump on a force plate or to do any other neuromuscular type testing that suggests, yeah, we're fresh, we're fresh, all the while seeing your training capacity dropping off behind you and when you're getting done, when you're getting beaten by teams that are sprinting 19% more than your team, you've got to wonder. Now I acknowledge that in some of those games that we've seen this weekend in the AFL, like we said, dead rubber. But some of those teams are still succeeding, even if it's not 19%, they're still blitzing their team's opposition away. And we'll see in the coming weeks how that looks, but it does appear to me that there are teams that have certainly under-trained in the back end of the season because the AFL season's long, so it's 24 rounds. So 24 weeks, plus a bye week in the middle, a split round at the beginning. So that's 24 rounds. So 24 weeks plus a bye week in the middle, a split round at the beginning, so that's 26 weeks. So 26 weeks is plenty of time to detrain.

Jason Weber:

And I've got to say that I think we look at injury stats and sometimes I'm very, very adamant that some of the injury stats we look at are incorrect. I think when we're looking at injuries that are wholly unprepared things like proximal hamstring tendons like a player gets pushed and they go forward and land on their leg, it's almost like a collision injury and it tears the tendon. That can't be construed as a soft tissue injury. That is volume related. It may be, I don't know, but when you watch them on TV and they happen, same as an Achilles where someone. We talk about the Achilles in the NFL, and some of them have been where a player props on the ground and a 140 kilogram guy lands on top of him and crushes him and forces their leg into dorsiflexion. You know that's going to happen. So, in any case, that's the injury, that's a part of it. But I think we've got to be clear as a professional of how you would approach this as a professional, of how you would approach this and are you approaching it in a really data-driven manner.

Jason Weber:

I must say I go through the practice myself. I'm not currently in a team role at present, but I certainly go through the process. I spent a couple of hours today writing down like what would I look at If I went? Like what would I look at If I went back in? What would I look at? What would I be aiming for? And that's, if you know. Obviously, for me AFL is the most recent sport that I've done at a high level, but it's the same thing You'd be going if you went into discussions I've had in American football.

Jason Weber:

What do we know from last year? What have you seen before? What do we know works? What do we know doesn't work? But I think one of the things we've got to get to is the idea of understanding what's happening. It's not just about being fresh.

Jason Weber:

26 weeks is a long time and it's time enough for players to detrain and I think we see that with players who don't, let's say, use the american term have high reps. You get players who are benched. You know afl players come off the bench. Rugby league, rugby union, rugby union at the moment guys are playing just 50 minutes and rotating big guys out. What happens the next week when they have to play 80 minutes? Bridging that gap is really, really difficult. The American football is a key example. You might get guys only play a couple of reps per week in competition but they've got to train it through the week. But then we get to training and, principally, we want the number ones getting reps so they're practicing for the following week. So really think about being as creative as you can to get those players up.

Jason Weber:

But look at the body of your big squad. What information have you got that tells you you're doing enough to keep them where they are? Now there are teams that I've spoken to in recent times that you know we're doing the submaximum test. You know submax test, doing a I forget the exact specificity of it, but probably level four, five, six on a yo-yo or a beep test, and they're doing them for a couple of minutes and getting heart rates and seeing if the heart rate is relative to a constant velocity work. Is that indicator enough that physiologically they're doing okay? Heart rate variability heart rate variability can show you a lot of things.

Jason Weber:

Unfortunately, hrv can also be dominated by big influence. I know a captain of the team I worked with for a long time, great captain, who was very resilient and played for a long long time. But when I was doing HRV very frequently with that group his HRV was extraordinarily low all the time and discussing it with him he didn't feel any better or worse than previous years, but it was probably a weight of what he was doing as captain. He had business interests outside the league, new kids, all that. There's a lot of pressures. So then I think it comes back down to probably maybe summarizing with the point I made at the beginning about breadcrumbs Make sure when you're assessing any given problem or any given point of view, try to do it from two, three different points.

Jason Weber:

So take a different perspective, grab a different set of data on the same issue, so to speak. So if you're looking at, let's say, training volume, are they fit enough? Well, is there a training volume question? Is there a heart rate response question? All the types of things you can look at associated with that.

Jason Weber:

If you're looking at a hamstring injury, we want to be looking at multiple things. It's not just strength, it's not just range of motion. Clearly my bent is running mechanics. We want to see where that hamstring is. We know categorically again multiple discussions this week about how we see a hamstring injury coming back and the particularly the influence we see on um, on hip block, um, that people just not looking at and I get there's a technology component to that and I get there's a technology component to that and I guess there's a technology component to the whole conversation of this little podcast all by myself is understanding the tech and what questions is it answering? Not just accepting the data that's given to us, but making sure that what we're measuring is answering a question. I think one of the questions that may be to us, but making sure that what we're measuring is answering a question I think one of the questions that may be being missed at the moment is how do we keep our people fit enough in season? So I'm going to leave you with that thought.

Jason Weber:

Anybody who's interested in the AFL I strongly recommend looking at, if you can see, the last games on Sunday, the 25th of August, in Australia and then how it evolves over the next couple of weeks. In the finals, the teams that are all in the finals are all on the up. For mine there's one or two who might try and jump in at the last, but all those teams are on the up. All those teams have had bad sections through the year and they're going, some of them, hawthorne in particular. Not unlike Pep Guardiola, they came late and they're flying. So anyway, I hope this gives you something to think about. Enjoy. I hope to be back with Darren next week having another chat before he goes on. A little bit of leave, but enjoy and we'll catch you next time.