Players need to pressure AFL: Bucks

Port Adelaide's Kane Cornes tries to cool down at AAMI Stadium last Sunday. Picture: Sarah Reed Source: The Advertiser

COLLINGWOOD coach Nathan Buckley believes the AFL Players Association must pressure the league in coming days to make sure players are not exposed to undue duress in extreme heat during the NAB Cup.

Buckley suggested the AFL needed to be wary of putting its pre-season rules experiments, in particular "gathering information about the 3 and 1 interchange rotation", ahead of the players' welfare.

His comments came after Adelaide, Port Adelaide and St Kilda sweltered through 38-degree heat at AAMI Stadium on Sunday afternoon, prompting Saints coach Scott Watters to call for "a close look at the heat policy".

Speaking at Healesville Sanctuary on Monday, as part of Collingwood's community camp in the region, Buckley said tweaking the policy "is probably something that the AFLPA will look at strongly over the next couple of days in particular".

"If we're playing in 35-plus-degree conditions, there's a duty of care to the playing group to make sure that we shuffle things a little bit to make sure players aren't under undue duress," Buckley said.

Clubs must trim their squads to 22 for the rest of the pre-season as the AFL's trial of a cap on interchange rotations takes effect.

They can make just 80 interchange rotations, 20 per quarter, under the experimental rule.

Buckley queried the relevance of taking statistics about interchange rotations during the extreme heat of the pre-season anyway.

"Moving the time of games is a consideration but I can understand the broadcasting relationship," he said.

"Adding players to the interchange bench, sometimes you need to say as much as we'd like to get this information, the conditions don't allow us to do that."

The AFL has scope to shorten quarters and extend breaks under its extreme heat policy.

Buckley said he was "sure the AFL and AFLPA will come to some arrangement and I'd be surprised if we didn't see some movement to support the welfare of players... In the end the thing that the AFL and the PA need to be commended for is that they have had the players' welfare at heart, and I think common sense will prevail."

Collingwood's next NAB Cup match against the Eagles is scheduled for 4.40pm in Perth on Sunday March 3.

He said the Magpies' two wins to begin their NAB Cup campaign on Friday night were "quite encouraging", and was unperturbed about the two-week break until the next match.

"We'll have a solid training session on Wednesday and probably some match simulation on Friday," he said.
Buckley believes the Magpies are well advanced in their preparations to this time 12 months ago.

"Clearly we believe the decisions we made on the trade table in our recruiting have us better placed," he said.

"We believe that we're in a position to contend for premierships right now and a lot of our decisions came with that in mind.

"We feel we're stronger and we feel we're deeper."

He said the club was relatively well placed on the injury front, with Dale Thomas (ankle), Alex Fasolo (foot), Tyson Goldsack and Luke Ball (knee) a chance to be back to full fitness by Round 1.

He expected tall backman Lachy Keeffe to return from a knee reconstruction a couple of months into the season.

Apart from the community camp in the Yarra Ranges, Buckley has just spent a few days in Mansfield with a dozen youngsters as part of the club's first-year players camp, which incorporated golf and hiking.
 

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