Aiming to have a team at peak fitness for a whole season in Australian football is a plan destined to failure. It can take up to 35 games to get from the first pre-season practice match in early February to the ultimate aim, victory at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on the last Saturday in September. And to get there, you have to prove time and again throughout the season that your team is better than each of the other fifteen who are just as determined to reach the same goal. In other words, although your best results as a team will hopefully be at the
business end of the season, if team performance was below par early in the season, it just won't matter how well your team might have played in September because they'll only be watching the action from the grandstands