- Sep 15, 2011
- 33,343
- 52,189
- AFL Club
- West Coast
Maybe seven times to three seems insignificant but over the course of five years, 42 to 15 absolutely could make a difference in terms of knowing how to play a ground better i.e. a real home ground advantage.Like having less home games than every other team, you mean?
*which for the record, doesn’t bother me - it is what it is, and isn’t changing any time soon and doesn’t impact on what happens to our win loss record.
But again, can someone tell me what is the difference between playing at a non-home ground 7 times in a season, and playing there 3 times? How much more familiar are those 4 games going to make someone?
‘Brodie why is it that Stanley can tap it to his midfielders and you can’t?’
‘It’s because he played here four more times this year, Horse.’
But I was referring to travel. Simply dismissing travel as not that a big a deal is easy enough but the players and coaches tend to disagree. We all know footy is a hard game, players leave the ground sore. Some players largely get to drive home, soak and have a sleep while others pack themselves into a plane for several hours. Do that across a season and is it a surprise if some teams are more worn down by the last Saturday in September, at which point they have to do it again while their opponents, who may have finished lower, don’t have to.