Top 10: The players who turned their careers around

Which players entered the AFL and in the early stages were seemingly unprofessional before turning it all around?

After the raging success of the Top 10 list of best preparers, high performance guru Andrew 'Jack' Russell has returned with another list.

Through this time in the AFL, Russell has worked with a diverse range of players, helping them develop not only physical performance but also their mental preparation and attitude.

Russell has seen firsthand how players develop their preparation and training methods throughout their careers and shared his rankings of the Top 10 players who turned their careers around.

His perspective on the mentality shifts of some of the game's greatest players is captivating.

“Something about how they trained, how they lived or the way they thought about preparing,” Russell said on SEN Breakfast.

See the list of players who turned it all around.

10 - Stuart Dew (Port Adelaide & Hawthorn)

“I basically said I’m not involved until you show me you are fair dinkum, by getting to this level yourself, without me involved at all,” Russell said.

“12 months later he plays in a premiership

“I walked into a café in August 2007 with Clarko and Stuart Dew and Clarko says, ‘Come over here, Jack’, and I walked past and did not recognise Stuart Dew.

“He had some work to do.”

9 - Shaun Burgoyne (Port Adelaide & Hawthorn)

“He would be possibly one of the worst-conditioned players I have worked with, no aerobic capacity to work with at the start.

“He did a session in his first year, he did 10 x 100s and he vomited at the end of it.

“I went to lunch one day with a group of players and they said to me, ‘This bloke is not going to make it’, at the start of that season.

“By the end of that season that same group of players said, ‘Wow this guy is a superstar’.”

8 - Damien Hardwick (Essendon & Port Adelaide)

“He always trained hard but the off-field stuff, the diet, all that stuff, not sure he was completely committed to that area.

“When I went to Essendon, I remember the physio saying to me, ‘Well, Damien warms up by putting the heater on in his car, so don’t expect much more of him than that’.

“He got it late in his career.

“He went to port Adelaide, he had a bad knee injury and basically, he said, ‘Well, I have to shift and change or I’m not going to survive here, I’m not going be able to play out my career’.”

7 - Josh Gibson (North Melbourne & Hawthorn)

“He missed the first two national drafts; he was drafted at 20 from Port Melbourne.

“By his own admission he was lazy, overweight.

“He told me a story when they did a time trial around The Tan one day; he got his mate to pick him up and drive him around The Tan and then dropped him off and he finished top three in the time trial when he was at Port Melbourne.”

6 - Brian Lake (Western Bulldogs & Hawthorn)

“He arrived at Hawthorn, and he was in a pretty bad way because he had a bad knee injury, he was overweight.

“He came into the environment, and he completely shifted himself, changed his diet, trained hard, like we really trained him hard, I think he was scared of Hodgey and Mitch and Buddy and those guys and he so wanted to buy into that new culture.

“He shifted everything completely, went on and obviously won the North Smith medal in 2013.”

5 - Matt Kennedy (GWS, Carlton & Western Bulldogs)

“In 2019 Matt Kennedy averaged 10 disposals a game and one clearance. All I heard about him was that he couldn’t run and he was too heavy.

“He completely shifted the off-season of 2021/22, did a massive endurance running program.

“Had a mindset shift, completely changed his body shape.

“2022, he averages 22 disposals and five clearances, completely turned his game around, his life around.

“He’s probably been in system another 6-8 years than what he thought he was going to be.”

4 - Jordan Lewis (Hawthorn & Melbourne)

“Was an extremely independent person from the start, resilient physically and mentally from the start, he did it his way, he didn’t need many other people to help him.

“You saw his body shape change in his time in the game.

“He wasn’t very quick, he was highly skilled and very, very smart, but he had a decision to make and he changed, he leaned up, he changed his diet he did a lot of running.

“He became meticulous about the way he trained.”

3 - Nic Newman (Sydney & Carlton)

“The boys at Sydney thought he trained pretty hard, but his body shape needed changing.

“His habits by his admission were far, far from being optimal.

“He basically walked into my office and said, ‘New club, what do I got to do, what do I have to change’.

“He did, he shifted, so much respect for ‘Newy’ and the way he’s gone about it, he’s a real leader down there at that football club.”

2 - Marc Pittonet (Hawthorn & Carlton)

“From 2015 to 2019 he played seven games in five years.

“He’s the first player that I worked with that went and committed to a mindset coach and paid big dollars to have a mindset coach outside of the club environment. It was through his cousin, Scotty James, and Red Bull.

“He changed his diet completely. He used to walk into my office and say, ‘Mate, do you reckon we can get any better?', and he’s like, ‘I’m doing it the best I could possibly do it'.”

1 - Luke Hodge (Hawthorn & Brisbane)

“Hodgey did start where he started, and he didn’t do things particularly well off-field. He always trained hard.

“There were three iterations of Hodgey, '05 was number one. The first iteration was basically he got the training element right, he trained so hard.

“2010 was the second iteration, he had a shoulder operation after '08 and so many lessons were learnt after '08 from that Hawthorn time that we then took into the 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 seasons.

“Third iteration for him was in 2012, we had a PCL injury in '12, and he didn’t play any games and then he came back and played finals, then he had a PCL reconstruction. He developed a right foot because he couldn’t kick on his left for six months.

“So many things we learnt that we put into play that was part of that three-peat.

“Everything in his life he became so systematic about his diet, the way he trained, he did a lot of DNS with Mark McGrath, which he then took Mark McGrath with him when he went to Brisbane.

“Then the fourth iteration was his Brisbane time, when he was trying to extend it out for as long as he could.

“The number one thing about Hodgey is he learnt from his mistakes, and he moved forward with an action plan straight away.”