One thing that I've been thinking about recently, something that has in particular, been highlighted by this past weekends results, is training load.



Port Adelaide and Hawthorn, having sewn up their finals campaign, have spent the past 4 weeks engaging in a particularly heavy training load in order to prepare for the finals.



The results there have been pretty outstanding.







We'll start with the results:



HAW:

12 point win over Adelaide

20 point loss to North

50 point win over GC





PTA:

3 point win over Melbourne

20 point loss to Richmond

2 point loss to Essendon

20 point loss to Adelaide



So we are defintely seeing a decrease in onfield performance here. First thing that strikes me with this kind of thing, is line betting. Reckon there is a massive potential here if you are tracking the training loads on the various fan forums that discuss this level of detail.



Second thing, of course, is fantasy applications.



Prior to these clubs engaging in their inflated training workload, both clubs were averaging 79SC points. Since engaging however, Hawthorns average has dropped to 75SC while Port Adelaides have dropped to 73SC.



That's a massive 8% drop in performance at Port.



These drops are club wide, meaning the premium players are dropping just as hard as anyone on the list.



Really, this seems like the kind of thing we should be keeping track of for next year- if players from finals-bound teams are dropping in performance as te season goes on- perhaps it could be worth upgrading into teams that aren't finals bound?



Also, if you want to play along at home, I'd love to hear about the training regiment at other clubs as we're heading into the business end.