A number of the AFL‘s leading voices have hit out at the league’s decision to ban skinfold testing on incoming draft prospects.
The purpose of the skinfold test is to measure the body fat percentage and give clubs a better idea of the fitness level of a draft prospect.
While it’s always been a part of the AFL, skinfold testing is set to be scrapped.
Port Adelaide great Kane Cornes slammed the decision and said the league is forgetting that AFL players aren’t the “average person off the street”.
“This is just ridiculous, what are we setting these players up for?” Cornes asked on SEN.
“They walk into an AFL club, they are going to have their skinfolds tested, so I would have thought getting them accustomed to it is a good thing.
“Society has shifted, I understand that, but this isn’t your average person off the street; this is a person who is aspiring to become an elite athlete and elite athletes I have no issue calling a player overweight, none whatsoever.”
Meanwhile, Sydney Swans list manager Kinnear Beatson, who will have a big say in the talent his club brings in, gave a similarly critical view of the AFL’s decision.
Beatson said the decision does no favours for clubs, who he claims receive less data than they used to.
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“I have never heard of a club belittling a player or shaming a player [at the Draft Combine] because of his physical stature or, in this case, what his skinfold readings were,” Beatson said.
“You wouldn’t solely rule out a player based on poor skinfold test but it’s all part of a jigsaw puzzle.
“It probably hasn’t happened well enough in the past is educate the players on the benefit of having them done and how it can enhance their physical performance by them understanding what they’re eating is going to have an impact on their skinfold readings, and therefore will have an impact on their endurance abilities.
“When playing elite sport, the whole thing is challenging. You are going to turn up to pre-season and do a 2km time trial or a beep test or a Yo-Yo test. That’s part and parcel of it. No one is forcing you to do it. If you don’t want to put yourself in that environment, don’t put your hand up for it. That’s fine, someone else will take your place.
“We actually get less data now than we used to, which personally I find a little frustrating. We need more information, not less, so we can make accurate calls.”
Essendon boss Xavier Campbell also found it difficult to get his head around the AFL’s decision.
“I could sort of understand it at a grassroots level, I think there’s some merit there, but we are a performance-based industry,” he also told SEN.
“A big part of that is the physical aspect of that. I’m not sure we’ve got any skinfold metrics that are included in contracts these days, but it still is a big part of the testing that the high performance does on the players.
“There are different ways to go about it, body mass index and everything else like that, so it’s not my area, but I’d say there’s still got to be some sort of form of assessment that needs to be included in that part of the game.”