The fact that the elite group was n

The fact that the elite group was not better than the school group in the planned AFL agility test may also be explained by the characteristics of this test. First, it involves changes of direction of up to 180, that is, the player runs up around a pole and back to the original direction. Time–motion analysis of AFL
games has shown that typical changes of direction are ,90. Another feature of this test is that it involves preplanned movements whereby the athlete has to locate the position of a pole and adjust his steps to move around the obstacle without
touching it. The resulting movements can appear quite unnatural and are different from the agility demands of the game. Previous research using the planned AFL agility test has shown that this test is only slightly related to playing performance in junior footballers (10,19). However, a study of fitness characteristics of AFL Draft Combine players (who are 1–2 years older than the players in this study) (10) reported a mean time of 8.57 seconds for the planned AFL agility test, a performance that is superior to the players in this study. Therefore, more work is needed to refine planned and RATs to consistently differentiate players of different levels of expertise and seniority