February 7, 2025 • 13 mins
It’s time for the pre-seasons to begin.
The NRL, AFL, and Super Rugby are all entering their pre-seasons, easing back into their games before the real action begins.
Our coaching guru Wayne Goldsmith joined the show to discuss what teams aim to achieve in their pre-season, and how a successful one can springboard into a successful season.
He says that the aim is to have them “job ready” on the first day of the first round.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Weekend Sport podcast with Jason Vine
from News Talks, EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
News Talks EDB and Weekend Sport. It's that time of
the year when Super Rugby preseason hits its final stages.
The season, of course, starts next weekend or on Friday. Actually,
NRL and AFL teams getting ready for the start of
their respective seasons in early March. So what's the best
recipe for a successful preseason campaign. Let's bring it our
(00:34):
coaching guru Wayne Goldsmith for some inside on this. Wa
ain't always good to chat to you, thanks for joining us.
As always in general terms, how soon before a professional
season starts should preseason ideally begin.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
It's funny and always great to chat to you too,
my friend that this is a really favorite topic of mind. Look,
we know that in the AFL and the NRL, for example,
the teams who don't make the final series, they're already
back in training while the final series is going on.
(01:09):
That's how it really is a year round commitment at
that level. If you're talking junior codes a little bit
different though. I'm a big believer you've got to have
seasonal sport, and I know that's not trendy or comfortable
with a lot of the codes who want you to
play year round soccer or year round cricket or the
year round rugby. I'm a big believer for kids in
(01:32):
junior codes that they've got to have an off season,
even if the off season is playing another sport, getting
on their mountain, biking, having some fun, or just chilling
out with their friends. So there's a big difference between
preseason for the pros and preseason for the juniors and
the kids. But it would be fair to say that
(01:53):
for the pros it is genuinely a year round commitment now.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
But surely in a contact sport like rugby league, like AFL,
like rugby union, there's the need to rest, to refresh,
to recover, to have some time away from the game,
isn't there?
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Well, there is, and there's other applications two piney like
for example, very very common that the surgical wards of Sydney, Melbourne,
Brisbane and all the major capitals are full of rugby,
Rugby League and AFL players on the Monday morning after
their last game. Because if I'm the head coach, I
(02:32):
want my players to get their surgeries done so they're
trimming their shoulder or the knee of whatever they have
to have done. I want those minor igning injuries fixed
as soon as possible to give us maximum possible lead
in for doing rehab and them ready to come back
at full speed exactly when I need them. So for
(02:53):
some players, they're almost fourth to have downtime because they're
having surgery or they're having a break. I think the
thing we always forget they made is is the mental
side is. You know, footy players play because they love it,
and they love it because they're playing a game with
their mates. That's incredibly important. But man, you just try
(03:13):
being a professional player and having a camera in your
face every time you go to a plat, or being
in the constant pressure of media assessment, the pressure of
having to perform in rugby's case in New Zealand, in Australia,
maybe in South Africa, in England at the end of
the year, that takes a mental and emotional toll. I
think the reason they've got to have eight off season
(03:36):
of some kind is to get that mental and emotional refreshment.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
So once you do get back into preseason, whenever that
might be. How much of preseason initially anyway, is about
building an aerobic base.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Yeah, and look, this is the million dollar or the
hundreds of million dollar question. I think with all the
players that we've got running around at this time of
the year, the model has been usually those first two
or three weeks relatively gentle, easing back in with the
reintroduction of some skills work, maybe doing some easy running
(04:14):
and gently coming back into it, and then progressively improving
an increasing intensity, making things a bit longer, more introducing contact,
which has got to be managed very carefully because they've
got a huge season of contact. All those things that
take into account with the aim to have them what
we would call job ready on the first day of
(04:36):
the first round. Now, this is where I think it
gets really fascinating, because for some clubs they have in
all the codes. Some clubs they're off season is almost hellish,
it's it's I mean, I've seriously been only fairly recently
to NRL Press season with players throwing up training in
(04:58):
full heat, wrestling, then running, then wrestling, then running, and
I've seen some incredible things and in some ways that
element of the physical preparation is at a greater demand
without the contact than you'd see in a game. So
some teams really pride themselves on the intensity and the
(05:20):
quality and the level of off season and preseason training.
Others tend to be a bit more cautious. And I
think this is the game that your player as a
head coach is do I get the players in absolute
condition ready to go on game one or do we
hold back a little bit and allow some game fitness
(05:41):
to evolve over the first three or five rounds. I
don't know the competitions are so tough pointy that and
the points that you know a winner is worth the
same in round one as it is in round twenty five.
I don't know that you can actually take time to
build into game fitness anymore.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
So basically what you're saying is that you need to
be firing on all cylinders in round one of the
new season.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
And I think the competitions they're deliberately shaped, aren't they
to make competitions harder and tougher. There's no easy games
in the NRL at the moment. It's become a very
tight competition. The level of quality of games in all
the codes has become that there's no uncertainty of outcome
(06:26):
in far more games there's no really dominant two or three,
four or five teams. Is there's a real quality equality
and a lot of the codes, and I think because
of that, you can't afford to drop points. But then
that's again, that's the game, isn't it. That's the challenge
is if I, for example, had a team and we'd
had a pulk season last year the year before, we're
(06:49):
down around the bottom, you would more than likely And
this happens quite often. And I would imagine, say for
paramatter with Jason Ryles, they would have done it. Maybe
Benji Marshall in the NRL the teams that have really struggled,
having an outstanding physical preparation is a not a guaranteed way,
but it's a highly likely way to improve your performance
(07:11):
for the following year. But there's the problem is that
if you invest in this massive training load in the
off season, retally intense, really focused preparation in the preseason,
and you might have a blindingly good first five games,
you might lose an x seven because they're so injured
and so tired, because you've just got it wrong. And
(07:33):
but one of the great things in all the codes
is the introduction of sports science, of physiologists and strength
and conditioning professionals and physiotherapists, sports med staff who are
a monitoring training load constantly to try and find what's
the right balance so that we can win games but
not be overstretched or overloaded.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
What a balance to strike off the training panic? Often
a new season brings new players to a team, new
members of coaching staff. How much of a preces and
campaign should be focused on integrating new faces into your setup?
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Yeah, really good question, A really good question for the
teams and the senior coaches who've got a culture, so
Craig Bellamy for example Melbourne in the NRL, And for
teams where they've got to set culture and experienced coach
and a group that's been together. The incoming players incoming
staff generally have to learn quickly to fit into that system.
(08:37):
So you know, youre the Brisbane Lines in the AFL
Chris Farton, highly experienced, very experienced staff. If you were
going into that environment, the premiers, you'd have to fit
into the Brisbane Lines way of doing things. That would
be the expectation in some other clubs. If you've been
brought in as a marquee player or as a new
(09:00):
coach with a high level of skill. In a particular,
the expectation would be you fit into the culture, you
build some free ships and connections that you've been recruited
specifically to make an impact, and there's an expectation that
you'll not just fit in maybe socially and culturally, but
technically and tactically and from a performance you're expected to
(09:22):
shake things up. You expected to come in and be
a bit of a disruptor and try to make a difference,
because that's why they paid you to come in. If
you're not coming in and shaking it up and making
a difference to a team that's battled, well why would
I have recruited you. So yeah, it depends, I think
on where the team is at. The team's got a
very set culture and you you and I have talked
(09:43):
about culture previously that you know. I remember having a
brief drop in with the Crusaders a long time ago
and they use the term a Crusaders type of player
and it was a wonderful phrase. And I know Geelong
you've used the same term. The Bulldogs use the same term.
Is they said, we go looking we recruit crusaders or
we recruit Bulldogs or recruit caps. We recruit peace people, coaches, athletes,
(10:07):
staff who are our kind of people because we know
our culture is right and we know that they'll come in,
they'll fit in, and they'll make us richer and a
little bit better. In some other places where they're less
certain of what they stand for and who they are,
they've got to target people who can make them better
and almost give them the opportunity to be disruptive and
(10:29):
make things different because what they're doing. You know, what's
that old great phrase about the definition of insanity is
doing the same thing and expecting a different result. So, yeah,
what you expect from players and coaches depends very much
on your culture and where the team at the moment.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Just to finish. If pre season doesn't go to plan
and you reach round one and the team is not
job ready, is not where you want them to be.
Is there a time in season to make up for
lost ground that you didn't achieve preseason?
Speaker 3 (11:06):
There is, But there's got to be great communication between
the coaching staff, the players and the support team, the
strength conditioning, the performance analysts, the physias. Everyone's got to
be on the same board and be talking about it. Openly,
because if there's an issue, it needs to be identified
quickly and addressed with a degree of urgency. Having said that,
(11:30):
though piney, it's really important. So if you've sold the
players the idea that the playing style or the type
of game we're going to play this year is going
to be really successful, our system will work. And you
get to round one and you lose and you say,
so much, we've got it wrong, We're changing everything. It
confuses the players, and if they lose faith in you
(11:51):
as a coach, when they lose faith in their system,
then you could be headed for an absolute disaster. So
I often say the coaches and staff, you've got to
have a what if process for game one? What if
we win and we dominate? All right, what's week two
look like? What's week three look like? If we go okay,
(12:12):
what do we do? And if first week is a disaster,
what we do So that, if you're like, their response
to what's happened in game one has got to be
planned so that even if it's a complete failure, that
there's a calm, cool, systematic process to turning it around.
I often say to coaches remembers that players can smell
(12:34):
fear very quickly, and if they sense that you've had
them training October November, December January, getting them to believe
in you and believe in the system, and then you
dump it all out the door after one lost, Well
they go away on a minute. Maybe these guys don't
know what they're doing and it's every man for himself
or every woman for themselves. So yeah, you've got to
(12:57):
have what happens in round one really up the round five.
I think you've got to have a plan for how
you will respond to win, loss or draw.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
In sight. As always from you, Wayne, thanks as always
for joining us across New Zealand with your expertise.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Always an absolute pleasure, my friend. I'm back in the
beautiful Shaky Isles in a few weeks. I'm down in
Tarrona doing some work in by a Plenty. If anyone's
down that way, please come up and say hello.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
I'm sure you will get quite a few people doing
just that. Wayne, Thanks indeed as always for your time.
Wayne Goldsmith, regular part of Weekend Sport across the year.
Find out more about Wayne and the work he does
and read some of his articles at wgcoaching dot com.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
For more from Weekend Sport with Jason Fine. Listen live
to News Talk zed B weekends from midday, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio
You're listening to the Weekend Sport podcast with Jason Vine
from News Talks, EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
News Talks EDB and Weekend Sport. It's that time of
the year when Super Rugby preseason hits its final stages.
The season, of course, starts next weekend or on Friday. Actually,
NRL and AFL teams getting ready for the start of
their respective seasons in early March. So what's the best
recipe for a successful preseason campaign. Let's bring it our
(00:34):
coaching guru Wayne Goldsmith for some inside on this. Wa
ain't always good to chat to you, thanks for joining us.
As always in general terms, how soon before a professional
season starts should preseason ideally begin.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
It's funny and always great to chat to you too,
my friend that this is a really favorite topic of mind. Look,
we know that in the AFL and the NRL, for example,
the teams who don't make the final series, they're already
back in training while the final series is going on.
(01:09):
That's how it really is a year round commitment at
that level. If you're talking junior codes a little bit
different though. I'm a big believer you've got to have
seasonal sport, and I know that's not trendy or comfortable
with a lot of the codes who want you to
play year round soccer or year round cricket or the
year round rugby. I'm a big believer for kids in
(01:32):
junior codes that they've got to have an off season,
even if the off season is playing another sport, getting
on their mountain, biking, having some fun, or just chilling
out with their friends. So there's a big difference between
preseason for the pros and preseason for the juniors and
the kids. But it would be fair to say that
(01:53):
for the pros it is genuinely a year round commitment now.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
But surely in a contact sport like rugby league, like AFL,
like rugby union, there's the need to rest, to refresh,
to recover, to have some time away from the game,
isn't there?
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Well, there is, and there's other applications two piney like
for example, very very common that the surgical wards of Sydney, Melbourne,
Brisbane and all the major capitals are full of rugby,
Rugby League and AFL players on the Monday morning after
their last game. Because if I'm the head coach, I
(02:32):
want my players to get their surgeries done so they're
trimming their shoulder or the knee of whatever they have
to have done. I want those minor igning injuries fixed
as soon as possible to give us maximum possible lead
in for doing rehab and them ready to come back
at full speed exactly when I need them. So for
(02:53):
some players, they're almost fourth to have downtime because they're
having surgery or they're having a break. I think the
thing we always forget they made is is the mental
side is. You know, footy players play because they love it,
and they love it because they're playing a game with
their mates. That's incredibly important. But man, you just try
(03:13):
being a professional player and having a camera in your
face every time you go to a plat, or being
in the constant pressure of media assessment, the pressure of
having to perform in rugby's case in New Zealand, in Australia,
maybe in South Africa, in England at the end of
the year, that takes a mental and emotional toll. I
think the reason they've got to have eight off season
(03:36):
of some kind is to get that mental and emotional refreshment.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
So once you do get back into preseason, whenever that
might be. How much of preseason initially anyway, is about
building an aerobic base.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Yeah, and look, this is the million dollar or the
hundreds of million dollar question. I think with all the
players that we've got running around at this time of
the year, the model has been usually those first two
or three weeks relatively gentle, easing back in with the
reintroduction of some skills work, maybe doing some easy running
(04:14):
and gently coming back into it, and then progressively improving
an increasing intensity, making things a bit longer, more introducing contact,
which has got to be managed very carefully because they've
got a huge season of contact. All those things that
take into account with the aim to have them what
we would call job ready on the first day of
(04:36):
the first round. Now, this is where I think it
gets really fascinating, because for some clubs they have in
all the codes. Some clubs they're off season is almost hellish,
it's it's I mean, I've seriously been only fairly recently
to NRL Press season with players throwing up training in
(04:58):
full heat, wrestling, then running, then wrestling, then running, and
I've seen some incredible things and in some ways that
element of the physical preparation is at a greater demand
without the contact than you'd see in a game. So
some teams really pride themselves on the intensity and the
(05:20):
quality and the level of off season and preseason training.
Others tend to be a bit more cautious. And I
think this is the game that your player as a
head coach is do I get the players in absolute
condition ready to go on game one or do we
hold back a little bit and allow some game fitness
(05:41):
to evolve over the first three or five rounds. I
don't know the competitions are so tough pointy that and
the points that you know a winner is worth the
same in round one as it is in round twenty five.
I don't know that you can actually take time to
build into game fitness anymore.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
So basically what you're saying is that you need to
be firing on all cylinders in round one of the
new season.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
And I think the competitions they're deliberately shaped, aren't they
to make competitions harder and tougher. There's no easy games
in the NRL at the moment. It's become a very
tight competition. The level of quality of games in all
the codes has become that there's no uncertainty of outcome
(06:26):
in far more games there's no really dominant two or three,
four or five teams. Is there's a real quality equality
and a lot of the codes, and I think because
of that, you can't afford to drop points. But then
that's again, that's the game, isn't it. That's the challenge
is if I, for example, had a team and we'd
had a pulk season last year the year before, we're
(06:49):
down around the bottom, you would more than likely And
this happens quite often. And I would imagine, say for
paramatter with Jason Ryles, they would have done it. Maybe
Benji Marshall in the NRL the teams that have really struggled,
having an outstanding physical preparation is a not a guaranteed way,
but it's a highly likely way to improve your performance
(07:11):
for the following year. But there's the problem is that
if you invest in this massive training load in the
off season, retally intense, really focused preparation in the preseason,
and you might have a blindingly good first five games,
you might lose an x seven because they're so injured
and so tired, because you've just got it wrong. And
(07:33):
but one of the great things in all the codes
is the introduction of sports science, of physiologists and strength
and conditioning professionals and physiotherapists, sports med staff who are
a monitoring training load constantly to try and find what's
the right balance so that we can win games but
not be overstretched or overloaded.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
What a balance to strike off the training panic? Often
a new season brings new players to a team, new
members of coaching staff. How much of a preces and
campaign should be focused on integrating new faces into your setup?
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Yeah, really good question, A really good question for the
teams and the senior coaches who've got a culture, so
Craig Bellamy for example Melbourne in the NRL, And for
teams where they've got to set culture and experienced coach
and a group that's been together. The incoming players incoming
staff generally have to learn quickly to fit into that system.
(08:37):
So you know, youre the Brisbane Lines in the AFL
Chris Farton, highly experienced, very experienced staff. If you were
going into that environment, the premiers, you'd have to fit
into the Brisbane Lines way of doing things. That would
be the expectation in some other clubs. If you've been
brought in as a marquee player or as a new
(09:00):
coach with a high level of skill. In a particular,
the expectation would be you fit into the culture, you
build some free ships and connections that you've been recruited
specifically to make an impact, and there's an expectation that
you'll not just fit in maybe socially and culturally, but
technically and tactically and from a performance you're expected to
(09:22):
shake things up. You expected to come in and be
a bit of a disruptor and try to make a difference,
because that's why they paid you to come in. If
you're not coming in and shaking it up and making
a difference to a team that's battled, well why would
I have recruited you. So yeah, it depends, I think
on where the team is at. The team's got a
very set culture and you you and I have talked
(09:43):
about culture previously that you know. I remember having a
brief drop in with the Crusaders a long time ago
and they use the term a Crusaders type of player
and it was a wonderful phrase. And I know Geelong
you've used the same term. The Bulldogs use the same term.
Is they said, we go looking we recruit crusaders or
we recruit Bulldogs or recruit caps. We recruit peace people, coaches, athletes,
(10:07):
staff who are our kind of people because we know
our culture is right and we know that they'll come in,
they'll fit in, and they'll make us richer and a
little bit better. In some other places where they're less
certain of what they stand for and who they are,
they've got to target people who can make them better
and almost give them the opportunity to be disruptive and
(10:29):
make things different because what they're doing. You know, what's
that old great phrase about the definition of insanity is
doing the same thing and expecting a different result. So, yeah,
what you expect from players and coaches depends very much
on your culture and where the team at the moment.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Just to finish. If pre season doesn't go to plan
and you reach round one and the team is not
job ready, is not where you want them to be.
Is there a time in season to make up for
lost ground that you didn't achieve preseason?
Speaker 3 (11:06):
There is, But there's got to be great communication between
the coaching staff, the players and the support team, the
strength conditioning, the performance analysts, the physias. Everyone's got to
be on the same board and be talking about it. Openly,
because if there's an issue, it needs to be identified
quickly and addressed with a degree of urgency. Having said that,
(11:30):
though piney, it's really important. So if you've sold the
players the idea that the playing style or the type
of game we're going to play this year is going
to be really successful, our system will work. And you
get to round one and you lose and you say,
so much, we've got it wrong, We're changing everything. It
confuses the players, and if they lose faith in you
(11:51):
as a coach, when they lose faith in their system,
then you could be headed for an absolute disaster. So
I often say the coaches and staff, you've got to
have a what if process for game one? What if
we win and we dominate? All right, what's week two
look like? What's week three look like? If we go okay,
(12:12):
what do we do? And if first week is a disaster,
what we do So that, if you're like, their response
to what's happened in game one has got to be
planned so that even if it's a complete failure, that
there's a calm, cool, systematic process to turning it around.
I often say to coaches remembers that players can smell
(12:34):
fear very quickly, and if they sense that you've had
them training October November, December January, getting them to believe
in you and believe in the system, and then you
dump it all out the door after one lost, Well
they go away on a minute. Maybe these guys don't
know what they're doing and it's every man for himself
or every woman for themselves. So yeah, you've got to
(12:57):
have what happens in round one really up the round five.
I think you've got to have a plan for how
you will respond to win, loss or draw.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
In sight. As always from you, Wayne, thanks as always
for joining us across New Zealand with your expertise.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Always an absolute pleasure, my friend. I'm back in the
beautiful Shaky Isles in a few weeks. I'm down in
Tarrona doing some work in by a Plenty. If anyone's
down that way, please come up and say hello.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
I'm sure you will get quite a few people doing
just that. Wayne, Thanks indeed as always for your time.
Wayne Goldsmith, regular part of Weekend Sport across the year.
Find out more about Wayne and the work he does
and read some of his articles at wgcoaching dot com.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
For more from Weekend Sport with Jason Fine. Listen live
to News Talk zed B weekends from midday, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio
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