Eade Issues Wake-up Call On Fatigue

The Age

Thursday August 17, 2006

LYALL JOHNSON

FORGET "well-being indexes" - Western Bulldogs coach Rodney Eade is calling for his players to show old-fashioned mental strength this week and tough out fatigue issues.

Harking back to the "good old days" when players would try to crash through the pain barrier, Eade said he believed modern footballers were sometimes "mollycoddled" when fatigued.

"It's a matter of your mindset," Eade said yesterday. "Good teams find a way when they're tired and good teams can push through. I think today in modern footy sometimes we mollycoddle the boys a little bit. It's not like the good old days where ... blokes just find a way, push through the pain barrier and all that lovely stuff that us coaches like to talk about.

"I think maybe sometimes with younger players, we rotate them off the bench, we do this and 'if you're fatigued, OK, come off' and maybe it's a bit of an out ... I think sometimes you've just got to find a way and tough it out.

"Our older blokes are pretty good at it; our younger blokes have just got to learn to be able to tough that out. I think the well-being index is maybe thrown out the window this week. They've just got to find a way and show a bit of mental strength."

Eade conceded the Dogs had been physically and mentally tired by their trip to Darwin at the weekend, but hoped his players, in particular the young ones, would push through their fatigue and run hard against Adelaide.

"The thing where we are at, with 25 or 26 to pick from and no tall players, (running hard is) really our big asset. We don't take pack marks, we haven't got tall players, we haven't got strong bodies ... so that's what we've got to do every week," he said.

The Bulldogs need to win one more game to guarantee a finals berth this year, and Eade doesn't believe the side will be merely making up the numbers.

"Even if we lost all three (remaining home and away games) and still got in the eight, we'd more than likely have a Melbourne final and get (Nathan) Eagleton back, (Daniel) Giansiracusa back, (Brett) Montgomery back," he said.

With the Bulldogs announcing they would play one home game in Canberra as well as Darwin over the next three years, Eade said he was happy the club would not be giving away home ground advantage to other clubs like it did with playing home matches in Sydney.

"Certainly the preferred option from the football department and the club is really to play home games in Melbourne," he said.

© 2006 The Age

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