Yep. The best thing Burgo did is create a culture of world class sports performance.Indeed, but did his excess running regime mean we didn't spend enough time practicing the most useful skill in footy, kicking goals? We will never know.
Burgo has pluses and minuses and people will argue their position on each of them based on their biases. I never bought the he over cooked us thinking. IMO he forgot it is a combat sport and the oppo worked us out, their thinking was - make it a stoppage game against Port, don't let them run, fatigue them with lots of bash and crash at stoppages, so that when we win the ball, they have to chase us fatigued. When that happened the players no longer bought the bullshit that we are so much fitter than everyone else and the mental edge of 2013 and 2014 was lost.
A week ago I saw another photo gallery the club put up on the website of the guys doing a hard gym session. I thought to myself, we didn't get many of these type of photos in the Burgo era. Is this driven by Mackers??
The 2 best things Burgo did, after making sure the players were all fit enough to run out of game and a season after 4 years of being unfit, were 1) employing Ian Mckeown as his strength and conditioning coach when he returned at the end of 2012, and 2) set up the Burgo academy and stuff with Uni's so that we would attract PHD candidates like Stu Graham and others and have a ready made stream of potential replacements.
If we win a flag, or even back to back, clubs will come after Ian and Stu, but hopefully the soft cap means they can't offer them a grandfather offer and pinch them. Stopping North American sports and Euro soccer clubs is another thing.
Mackers regime has seen us put on size and strength the last 3 years or so, so that we are more than skinny middle distance runners who can run all day. We have players who can run and are strong enough for the combat phase of the game.
Critique him all you like but he left the place in FAR better shape than he found it and ready to grow even further.
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