The AFL Academy tour is a camp conducted in Los Angeles and the IMG Academy in Florida.

Thirty seven of the best prospects for this year’s draft, including five South Australians and also three of the best Irish prospects attended the camp.

On the camp I was able to watch the players prepare, train, recover, conduct their rehab programs and interact with each other, as well as the high performance staff, medical staff and coaches. I also saw how they dealt with setbacks either through injury, losing passports or missing buses.

I spent some down time with the players to get to know them on a personal level, which gave me a great insight into the type of characters they are. This is critical for us as we only bring in quality young men to the Adelaide Football Club.

We had scheduled interviews with every player on the camp, and also had time in between training sessions and on the bus in transit to different outings to speak to them.

The training sessions were intense. The players were pushed to their limits and the kids that had done the work in preparation for this camp stood out; it was also evident who hadn’t done the work!

The first sessions consisted of four-quarter conditioning, a three-kilometre time-trial, hill runs, body weight circuit and game specific running. This session was the closes to an AFL session that I have seen in terms of volume of training at any junior level.

Recruiters keep an eye on a training session

The Academy boys were lucky enough to have coach Loren Seagrave, a world-renowned athletic and sprinting coach, take them for a session. He went through running techniques and gave the players tips on how to improve their overall power.  

This camp started in Orlando on the 12^th of January and finished up in Los Angeles on the 24^th of January. We travelled to Sarasota where the IMG Academy is based and stayed there for eight nights.

The IMG Academy is sponsored by Gatorade and there were other world-class athletes there training, so it was a great opportunity for these young men to see other first-class athletes and how they train.

Players prepare for a sprint session

This camp has given me a great insight into 37 young men that are vying to be drafted at the end of the year and that is invaluable to our decision making come draft time.

The highlight of the trip was watching this quiet and shy group develop a voice over the course of 12 days and become quite vocal in the last training session. The confidence that was gained by each member was noticeable and the overall leadership skills had improved out of sight.

I did have one interesting moment on the trip though when I woke up in the morning and had this warning on my phone…

…but luckily for me I slept right through it.

It was also great for Adelaide Crows ambassador Patty Mills to meet with the players after the Lakers vs San Antonio game.

The boys really appreciated it and were extremely excited after the meeting. Patty was all class as usual and took time to take photos and spoke to the group maybe 20 minutes after playing.