Departing Melbourne high-performance manager Darren Burgess has revealed a shift in approach to injury prevention was crucial to the Demons’ charge to their first premiership in 57 years.
After arriving at the Demons following their 17th-placed finish in 2019, Burgess was met with a squad that had seen almost half of its players undergo off-season surgery.
The solution, Burgess says, was “physical resilience”.
It made for much greater player availability in a season that culminated in the club’s first flag since 1964, when the Demons trumped the Western Bulldogs by 74 points in Perth.
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“My biggest thing was to try and implement some physical resilience in the playing group,” Burgess said on his Brukie and Burgo podcast.
“There’s two ways to go about injury prevention, I think.
“If someone has niggles you give them a rest so they complete as many sessions as possible, cut the sessions short if someone’s a bit sore, or you can build them up and push them through those periods where they’re a little sore, a little bit tender and a little bit fatigued… to provide them with that robustness to get through.”
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Burgess has carved out a tremendous career which, en route to Melbourne, had taken him to Port Adelaide and English Premier League juggernauts Liverpool and Arsenal.
Demons coach Simon Goodwin gave the fitness guru complete reign over high performance in his two years at the club.
“Providing that physical resilience was about turning up, day after day, with training intensity at a super-high level,” Burgess said.
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“It’s really tempting for medical, performance people to say, ‘we train from November to March and then we play games’. And in January when it’s a bit hot and someone rolled their ankle slightly, it’s tempting to say just have this session off, it’s just January, it doesn’t matter if you miss one session’. But it does.
“Those little habits build up and it matters massively.”
Burgess is joining Adelaide for the 2022 season.
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