Keeping the players fit, engaged and feeling positive is set to become a major focus for West Coast coach Adam Simpson a week on from the AFL season being suspended.
After the upheaval of last week across the football industry, players are now training from their homes and limited to kick-to-kick with one other person while the code is in recess.
The competition will not begin again until at least June 1 and clubs are only likely to be given the all-clear to resume training together several weeks prior to the eventual restart.
In the meantime, keeping his players connected is a key concern for Simpson.
“It was, obviously like everyone else, a very strange and bizarre week trying to deal with no football as one thing but also trying to look after your family, do the right thing for the community and stay engaged with our staff and players that aren’t at the club at the moment,” Simpson told Channel Seven.
“I think things will probably settle in the next week or so in terms of setting up their (players) lives.
“Things change every hour, like all of us, so now we’ll start looking at their programs and how we can keep fit, keep engaged, connect socially just like everyone else with all the apps that you can get and try to keep them positive.”
Plenty of scenarios have been thrown up for discussion for what will be a season like no other in 2020, including a wildcard weekend before finals and a best-of-three Grand Final series.
But Simpson isn’t yet in that headspace, with more pressing issues such as adapting to shorter games, a 17-match season and the possibility of fewer days break between matches on his mind.
“We’re just trying to work out how things work with when we’re going to come back and play. So a condensed, compressed season is something that we’ve got to get our heads around,” he said.
“If that’s to happen, that’s probably what it looks like in terms of days break, what do we do with travel, do we cluster up games?
“All those things are for the future. Still really trying to look after our staff and players in terms of trying to manage the now.
“The AFL will work through what they need to with how the game might look when we come back, but it’s definitely going to look very different.”