Mega Thread Port Forum General AFL Thread Part 28

[RussellEbertHandball]

Fremantle have 2 players in the top 22 for most games played in the history of the comp. Their number of 300 gamers is the same as Port in a similar time frame.

The Eagles only having 1 with 10 more years is a slight anomaly but I wouldn't call that rock solid evidence that the travel is a huge burden, especially when most of the players from one of their great eras were cooked by drug use.

Cant use the drug excuse, because plenty of players on the east coast were using as much as WCE players so they would have been equally as affected. That's why the AFL brought in an industry wide illicit drugs, 3 strikes policy in 2005. They knew it was a wide spread problem across all club.

WCE players were over the top for no more than 2 or 3 seasons between 2005 and 2007. Not 30+ seasons.

Anyway its hard to bench mark WA teams against other international clubs because almost nowhere else on the planet are teams being forced to travel 4+ hours in a plane every second week in their domestic competition and in a sport as physically punishing and taxing as Aussie Rules. The Perth Reds in the NSWRL comp in the 90's weren't around long enough to do a good comparison.

Brazil would be close with Fortaleza in the Serie A competition having to make a lot of 3 and 4+ hour flights. Maybe the team from Cuiaba as well. I don't know which division the teams from Manaus in the state of Amazonas, deep in the Amazon and NW Brazil, play in (the city hosted 4 group stage WC games in 2014), and where their opponents are based, but they might have to do as much travelling as the WA teams, maybe more. This is probably a good topic for GremioPower to analysis and compare.

Maybe somewhere in Russia or China.

Vancouver's team the BC LIons in the CFL might be the closest in terms of longest flight comparison from their home to Montreal vs Perth to Brisbane distance, but they don't have most of their opponents 4 or 5 hour flight away from them as the CFL is split into a west and east division, and they play against 2 teams that are an hour or so flight away in Alberta, and a team that is 2 hours flight and another 3 hours flight that are in the western division.

Because there are 9 teams, 5 in the western division and 4 in the eastern division they play 10 games in their division, 3 teams 3 times and 2 teams twice and the 4 teams in the east 2 times, home and away each so 4 x 4+hr trips per season. The teams from Ontario and Quebec do 5 long haul trips to the western division each season.

And you can't compare them to the 4 major North American sports. 3 of them NBA, NHL and MLB have longer road trips given their 82, 82 and 162 game seasons respectively so they play 2 or 3 games in a city and then do a short flight to another city or two, maybe three, before they get back home. Their might be one long haul 4+ hour flight in that road trip either at the start or end of the road trip.

NFL has 2 conferences and 4 divisions so the teams might get 2 long haul trips in a 17 game season over 18 weeks.

Plus the majority of North American pro teams have their own charter flights, which means they can do a lot more things to make the stress on the body less severe, than on standard commercial flights.

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

Nah, I can’t see how say 48 hours PER YEAR more than the SA teams in first and business class spread over 6 months on a plane will have an affect that great.

American sports stars do more, play more games AND have longer careers.


More likely the drug taking and whoring.

You are assuming they get first class and business class. That isn't always the case and wasn't available for a long, long time.

American sports have conferences and divisions, so they don't do that many long haul flights. See my answer in post #9,951

Plus playing on a court that is 94 feet by 50 feet and technically a non contact sport is less taxing than one played on a field that is 160m x 130m and contact and tackling are permitted. That's why they play 3 to 5 games a week.

Baseball is similar a non contact sport and a lot less running. They rest pitchers between games.

NHL are tougher bastards, 82 games over 7 months, in a physical contact game, crash on the ice, helps they have padding and they can play 3 to 5 games a week, but once again, they dont have many long haul flights because of road trips that involve lots of short flights.

NFL 2 conferences and 4 divisions in each, means you get may 2 long haul flights a regular season.

 

[JimmyBC]

I thought I heard cheering from West Lakes this morning

They are gonna rookie list him so it's not much of a story.

 

[El Zorro]

Tim Membrey is officially a Pie as of today.

Great pick up

 

[Enviable Tradition]

So the Crows need to downsize their new home due to costs.

No doubt they will reduce the members non alcoholic cafe area so that they can keep the size of Roos corner office.

On SM-G975F using BigFooty.com mobile app

 

[Ford Fairlane]

They are gonna rookie list him so it's not much of a story.

Don't rain on the crows parade!