Econopower
Team Captain
- Aug 15, 2020
- 367
- 955
- AFL Club
- Port Adelaide
I’m not an AFL coach. But I do have a lot of experience managing performance within major international financial institutions. So I’ve been thinking about what I would do to raise standards amongst the playing group.
Setting aside coaching/game plan issues for now, there are two aspects of performance on game day under the control of the players themselves - effort and execution.
As we all know, both can fluctuate considerably from game to game and even quarter to quarter. Some variation in skill execution is natural, particularly over short game samples, but variation in effort and intensity is not or should not.
Moreover, there seems to be little connection between fluctuations in effort and execution and team selection, adjusted for what is reasonable to expect for each player.
In any given season there tends to be the same core group rotating between the firsts and seconds, based primarily on where they stand on the depth chart and the state of injuries.
Instead I would like to see players higher up the depth/quality chart dropped more often when they don’t meet their KPIs in a game/series of games.
In this scenario each player would have highly personalised KPIs depending on their experience, role, capabilities, dependence on the performance of other players, etc. As a result, performance would be judged relative to baseline expectations.
Being prepared to drop senior players for not meeting their personal benchmarks would make the team weaker for some matches. But it would also set very clear expectations that there are consequences for underperformance, regardless of a player’s standing at the club.
And if implemented properly and fairly, taking account of team balance, luck and unavoidable fluctuations, in practice the best players might not be dropped often because they would understand the consequences of not meeting expectations.
I don’t of course expect anything like this to be implemented. Perhaps there is also a fatal floor in my thinking. And no doubt there are other ways to motivate players.
But I hate gold passes in any team sport. They are cancerous for performance. And it is unfair and unreasonable to effectively create lower expectations for a team’s most talented and experienced players just because it is easier to achieve the standard pass mark.
Certainly the type of relentless effort Collingwood’s players are putting in each week, or St Kilda’s right now, should be what we see and expect of Port too.
Our list has holes but not so many as to justify the last two games. And while our coach is rubbish and needs to go, the playing group needs to accept more responsibility as well.
Setting aside coaching/game plan issues for now, there are two aspects of performance on game day under the control of the players themselves - effort and execution.
As we all know, both can fluctuate considerably from game to game and even quarter to quarter. Some variation in skill execution is natural, particularly over short game samples, but variation in effort and intensity is not or should not.
Moreover, there seems to be little connection between fluctuations in effort and execution and team selection, adjusted for what is reasonable to expect for each player.
In any given season there tends to be the same core group rotating between the firsts and seconds, based primarily on where they stand on the depth chart and the state of injuries.
Instead I would like to see players higher up the depth/quality chart dropped more often when they don’t meet their KPIs in a game/series of games.
In this scenario each player would have highly personalised KPIs depending on their experience, role, capabilities, dependence on the performance of other players, etc. As a result, performance would be judged relative to baseline expectations.
Being prepared to drop senior players for not meeting their personal benchmarks would make the team weaker for some matches. But it would also set very clear expectations that there are consequences for underperformance, regardless of a player’s standing at the club.
And if implemented properly and fairly, taking account of team balance, luck and unavoidable fluctuations, in practice the best players might not be dropped often because they would understand the consequences of not meeting expectations.
I don’t of course expect anything like this to be implemented. Perhaps there is also a fatal floor in my thinking. And no doubt there are other ways to motivate players.
But I hate gold passes in any team sport. They are cancerous for performance. And it is unfair and unreasonable to effectively create lower expectations for a team’s most talented and experienced players just because it is easier to achieve the standard pass mark.
Certainly the type of relentless effort Collingwood’s players are putting in each week, or St Kilda’s right now, should be what we see and expect of Port too.
Our list has holes but not so many as to justify the last two games. And while our coach is rubbish and needs to go, the playing group needs to accept more responsibility as well.
