No Eagle turned more heads than a trim-looking Josh Kennedy when West Coast returned to training – and the star spearhead thinks he knows why.
“It’s probably the haircut,” Kennedy told 6PR with tongue planted in cheek.
“We have our fines and our games that we play every week as a group still over this isolation period and I got allocated a head shave.
“It was either that or pay some money … so I shaved my head.”
It was a sight for footy-starved fans’ sore eyes seeing the Eagles return to Mineral Resources Park on Monday, eight weeks after the AFL season went into recess.
Without the anxiety of the weekly lead-up to a match, Kennedy revealed he initially coped OK without football.
However, the 244-game veteran soon started missing the sport and team environment he has enjoyed for 15 years.
“Every week there’s this build up to the game and not having that it’s been, one, a bit of a sense of relief sometimes because that pressure and anxiety that as players we get building up to a game is something you don’t miss,” he said.
“But I suppose over the weeks going through you really do start to miss it – you miss those nerves, you miss everything like that. It has been a bit of a weird time in terms of that.
“The motivation for training, we were able to train three days a week, we still had volumes of game-type stuff once a week, which kind of puts you in the mindset to make sure you’re prepared for that.
“It is a lot harder when you’re not training as a group. You don’t have times to be at the club and you’re out for yourself trying to organise it.
“The motivation thing is still there for a lot of us, which is great.”
The restart to the 2020 campaign will look vastly different to anything dual Coleman medallist Kennedy has seen across his storied career.
West Coast is initially bound for a Gold Coast hub, presenting challenges for players and officials with families to work through ahead of the mid-June season resumption.
“The biggest thing (you miss) being away in a hub is your family environment,” father-of-two Kennedy said.
“Depending how long we’re away for and depending what certain people’s needs are in their household, it’s so different.
“Some families it might not work out best for them to come over. For my family, we’ve got kids in school, kids in daycare, my wife can work … so in terms of staying here it might be better than coming over and being on a resort with restrictions.
“We will be together but I can tell you now my four-year-old would start to go a bit crazy if she can only stay in a hotel room over the next couple of weeks.
“We’ll nut that out over the next couple of weeks.”
