AFL Draft Camp Seminar Cliff Notes Version:
By Joey Hayes
Sunday 15th February saw 55+ people converge on the watermark hotel to attend a mind blowing event put on by RDK Sports management to hear the insights from elite AFL Footballers, Recruiting staff, Sports Science Specialists, and AFL Players managers.
St Kilda Superstar Aussie Jones was up first
He spoke about his pathway to the AFL and shared some of the stories about the elite players in his era at St Kilda!
- Robert Harvey ran a 42km marathon with his father at 13 years of age!
- Robert Harvey knew what his strengths were (his fitness) and played to his strengths.
- Aussie Jones suggests every player find a footy mentor that is honest to you about your strengths and weaknesses. See things as they are, not better than they are or worse than they are was the take home point.
- To get drafted you need to have some physical quality that is elite. Is it your speed? Is it your endurance?
- Robert Harvey would do extra training away from the club! its the extra work away from training that no one sees that counts!
- Robert Harvey, Nick Riewoldt Stewart Lowe all have phenomenal work ethics!
- Leadership-Blair from Collingwood had surgery and was back at training 2 days later doing what he could.
- Competitiveness is key!
Joey Hayes was up next
Briefly touched on the role of the strength and conditioning coach.
- To make the athletes that come into contact with me a better human being! and give them transferable life skills that will allow them to be successful in other aspect of their lives moving forward to the future!
- To prevent injury-becuase if you’re injured you can’t train, if you can’t train you can’t play, if you can’t play you won’t improve nor will you be in the eye of the scouts.
- Enhance on field performance by identifying physical deficiencies
- Why generic programs fail to address many athletic deficiencies due to everyone performing the same training in terms of skills, strength training and endurance training. It is clearly obvious that players of different positions have different requirements, for example a ruck man vs mid fielder-ruck man needs specific skills to tap and palm the ball.
Jack Redpath Western Bulldogs
- Comeback from injury can be a lonely time consuming experience
- Massive improvements in performance and recovery can be made from nutrition and recovery!
- Eat right and sleep well and you’ll feel 100 times better!
- How do you get confident? Confidence comes from superior physical preparation!
Daniel Stewart Port Adelaide
- Have a back up plan for employment if footy does not work out.
- Don’t base your self worth solely on your footy performance.
- What makes Port Adelaide so powerful?
- Beliefs and coaching staff Darren burgess and ken Hinckley. Belief in the program. Port Adelaide Culture of success. Players want to be there. It’s the place to be! They want to play footy there!
Ryan Kogelman Player Recruiter
- Recruiting a player is an investment for the club. Like any prudent investor AFL Clubs do their background research on players to make sure they will make a good long term investment! Clubs typically invest more than $500k on the player once recruited.
- Recruiting staff will look at social media pictures and profiles, they’ll look at your friendship circles and talk to coaches, school teachers about you and your attitude.
- If you look like risky investment then they simply put a line through your name!
It was an amazing event and I urge any serious parent, coach, player or athlete to attend the next event as you’d be certain to pick up some extremely valuable tips and insights!
All the best,
Joey Hayes
