The Australian Way of Football

Football Federation Australia has identified one of the core barriers for developing Australian football as a real global competitor is in regards to our playing schedule. While the rest of the world is playing football year round, improving continuously to be the best in the world, the Australian way of football is based around 6 months on (playing season) and 6 months off (pre-season / off-season). While this adds options for young people to enjoy a multitude of sports throughout the year, it does nothing for improving the quality of Australian football and ability to compete with other nations.  

Australian players typically run in a cycle from off-season, pre-season, season, finals, off-season and so on. Throughout this cycle, players are put through a variety of training styles required to overcome the effects of the off-season in order to get them back in playing form. On average, it takes just 2 months of inactivity to see a complete reversal of benefits achieved in fitness. 

For Australia to produce globally competitive footballers, we must look at ways of increasing our year-round commitment to training and playing. 

This is one of the main reasons the Goldman Academy trains year round; to allow players an opportunity to continuously maintain, improve and build on previously acquired skills, without having to re-learn. This keeps training interesting and fun while challenging our players to go further than they thought possible! Our goal is to prepare players with progressive training in accordance with the FFA curriculum to ensure our players are ready to progress to elite development programs.