![\"Darren](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/98bc1d3845f50645c59fb746044b2e7ab8f74b28.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n\u201cPlayers are having so much time off, they have de-conditioned,\u201d Cornes said on SEN last month.<\/p>\n
\u201cCouple that with the fact they don\u2019t have time to reintegrate with running skills to get up to speed, they are just straight back in and we\u2019re seeing it. It\u2019s brutal. Whilst the players\u2019 association think they are doing the right thing by giving players so much time off, they\u2019re harming the product and harming the players and their careers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Burgess can\u2019t say for sure if this summer is an outlier in terms of volume of injuries \u2013 and it\u2019s hard to check, since data on pre-season injuries isn\u2019t readily available \u2013 but he remembers thinking last pre-season that there were an awful lot of blokes getting hurt, too.<\/p>\n
He doesn\u2019t think it\u2019s because of the amount of annual leave they\u2019re entitled to, though.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat they do in Australia is have the best part of three months off,\u201d Burgess said.<\/p>\n
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\u201cYou come back for three weeks before Christmas, then you have three weeks off, then you come back for two weeks, then you have four days off, then you come back for three weeks, and then you start playing games, and then most teams have another three days off before the season starts.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat interrupted training would mean that you\u2019re putting yourself at a higher risk of injury. Imagine if you\u2019re on the edge the whole time: you just get into a rhythm, and then you stop again.\u201d<\/p>\n
The solution, Burgess believes, lies within the round-ball game \u2013 his first love, and one that he has been reunited with after deciding to step down as the Crows\u2019 high-performance chief at the end of last season to become Juventus\u2019 new director of performance, working alongside chief executive Damien Comolli and club legend Giorgio Chiellini, their director of football strategy.<\/p>\n
In football, top European teams do not have staggered breaks. Usually, they get about a month off, or less if there\u2019s a major tournament on during the summer; there is a growing consensus within the game, which Burgess agrees with, that the demands on elite players these days are too high. Some leagues break over winter for a couple of weeks, especially those in snowy countries, to avoid the worst of the weather.<\/p>\n
But once they\u2019re back for pre-season training, they\u2019re back.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Darren Burgess has a high-ranking role at Juventus, one of the biggest clubs in the world.Credit: AP<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had a view for a long time now that a better system would be to give players probably until Christmas off \u2013 but then once January 1 hits, they go through the 10 weeks consistently until the season starts,\u201d said Burgess, who has previously worked for Arsenal, Liverpool and the Socceroos.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that would be a better model. It\u2019s not necessarily the amount of time that the players are having off, it\u2019s just that it\u2019s interrupted all the way.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome would argue [it would be bad] if you give players three or four months off after the season … they do it in the NFL and they hire personal trainers \u2013 and if they come back in shit condition, the game finds you out soon enough, either through injury or non-selection.\u201d<\/p>\n
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So Cornes, he believes, is half correct: the AFL pre-season is broken, but in terms of structure, not length.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve worked with Kane a lot,\u201d Burgess said.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, you can\u2019t help but hear his views in media, and some of his views I really do agree with. The [amount of] time off is probably about right, but it needs to be more continuous once they come back.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cPlayers are having so much time off, they have de-conditioned,\u201d Cornes said on SEN last month. \u201cCouple that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":467931,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-467930","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-afl","8":"tag-afl","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-australian-football-league","12":"tag-australianfootballleague","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/467931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}