AFL Players' Association President Patrick Dangerfield has some concerns about the jump in game time for the 2021 season.
To maintain flexibility across 2020, quarters were restricted to just 16 minutes, with teams allowed 90 interchange rotations.
This season, quarters will be back out to 20 minutes and rotations have been snipped to just 75.
The Geelong star says the changes ask a lot of the playing group.
“I think it’s a big ask to go from the shortened games to what we experienced on the weekend. It felt like a really long time on your feet,” Dangerfield told SEN’s Whateley.
“And with reduced personnel in footy departments it’s going to be a challenge going forward because we don’t have the support staff that we once did for obvious reasons.
“There’s no doubt there's going to be challenges ahead with keeping everyone on the track.”
Dangerfield adds that the amount of injuries we saw across the AAMI Community Series did worry him, particularly in regards to the increased game time.
“It’s definitely a concern I’ve thought about over the weekend as the injury toll continued to rise throughout the weekend,” he said.
“There’ll be some (injuries), like broken bones, you almost have to put them in a different category, but it’s sort of the accumulation you get over the pre-season that can be the concern.
“It’s been a shortened pre-season for some, but for others it’s been up to five or six weeks longer.
“Teams are in a different phase of their training, so you can’t always compare apples and oranges, but you want your best players playing and when there’s significant injuries the thought runs through your head for sure.”
The 2016 Brownlow Medallist wonders whether the AFL would have been better keeping quarters shorter in order to maintain the flexibility we saw last year.
“Beforehand I did (think the games would be too long this year), my view on that was the opportunities if it was shortened that it would create,” Dangerfield said.
“Whether that’s a more equitable fixture with the ability to have more five-day breaks between games, which is just not possible now because of the setup of last year to how long games are now and the reduced rotations.
“I really enjoyed the festival of footy last year, but it’s near-on impossible having experienced the length of the game on the weekend and particularly if you’ve got rising injuries, it would be risky.
“I thought it was wonderful to have footy every day for 20 days.”
Though he adds the 20-minute quarters didn’t have too big an impact on their clash with Essendon last Saturday night.
“In our game it didn’t seem too bad, but whether that’s because you’re not tired because the game doesn’t mean anything, I think there’s a bit of that,” Dangerfield said.
“There’s not the anxiety you get during a normal game, but certainly the management of your players, we’ve got guys that just won’t rotate for certain quarters and that hasn’t happened before in their careers and that’s a significant change.
“We do need a greater sample size before we jump up and down and start screaming, and I’m guilty of that as well, before we make concrete judgement on the different changes, the increased game time from what it was, reduced rotations and that sort of thing.”
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