AFL clubs will try just about anything to find a competitive advantage. Anything.
From overseas trips to training in altitude to fire walks, looking back over the years, there have been some questionable motivational tactics employed by clubs.
But which are the craziest?
1It's a bird. It's a plane. No, it's a Bulldog?
It ended in tragic fashion, but a pre-season ploy by Bulldogs coach Terry Wheeler to force his players out of a plane to confront their fears would not fly in modern day football. It shouldn't have flown then (excuse the pun).
In 1990, Wheeler implored all of Footscray's players to jump from a plane into the Port Phillip Bay.
"We had the mis-pleasure of seeing somebody die ... died right in front of us," former Bulldog Mark Hunter said this week.
The Dogs players were at Pakenham, training for their own looming jump, when disaster struck.
"We were practising how to get out of this makeshift plane, how to get on and off," Hunter recalled on the Danny/Boyd podcast.
"I was in the Hawk's (Doug Hawkins') group and the instructor said, 'Come out here, come out here and watch this guy land, he's a professional'.
"He came down wind, he turned too late and he just went ... into the ground about 100m from us.
"I just looked at Hawk and said, 'You've got to be joking. If you think we're jumping out of a plane, you've got to be joking'."
FULL STORY HERE.
