AFLPA President Patrick Dangerfield is not a fan of the AFL’s decision to reduce interchange rotations from 90 to 75 next year.
When asked on SEN’s Whateley whether he was a fan of the decision, the Geelong star answered: “Not particularly.”
Dangerfield explained that his concerns are with the length of the 2020 season and the potential for injuries going forward off the back of that.
“Even though this season presented us with a reduced number of games, it was also one of the longer seasons we’ve had, given when we started pre-season, the break in playing and training and then ultimately when the season concluded,” Dangerfield said.
“I think to go into a season next year and reducing interchanges, I’m a bit of a sceptic on it still as I suspect quite a few players will be.
“But the changes have been made so we’re just going to have to live with it as players.
“It will certainly fatigue players. Whether that’s a good thing and it opens up the play remains to be seen, I think.
“I’m wary of the potential ramifications for injuries given the season we had this year and the accumulative affect that may have given there won’t be a huge amount of time off for quite a number of players to then recover to go into a full and normal season compared to what we faced this year.
“It’ll be interesting, I just do have concerns around the health and safety of our players and the last thing we want is an increased number of injuries.
“There are times where teams don’t use their full allocation (of rotations), but at the same time they’re there for a reason.”
AFL Operations boss Steve Hocking said they considered the risk for injuries when making the call on the change.
“It was really a case of having a look at the pressure that built in the game through 2020,” Hocking told SEN’s Whateley.
“We reduced the quarters, we also left the rotations untouched, and we got really good analysis out of that as far as understanding that all of that extra energy that’s available to players was being sent towards greater influence around defence.
“Our belief by the end of the year was that we needed to adjust the rotations just to navigate what the future may look like and we’ve started it with 15 and part of it is looking after player safety.
“You’ve got to be careful not to overcorrect. For us it is about incremental change.”
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