The A-League’s most successful coach, Ernie Merrick, paid a visit to Fremantle Oval during his brief stay in Perth.
Wellington Phoenix boss Merrick and his assistants met with Fremantle Dockers coaches and strength and conditioning staff for an information sharing session while Freo’s first to fourth-year players were out on the track.
The Phoenix are in town to take on Perth Glory at nib Stadium tonight and Merrick was keen to gain an insight into another elite sport.
“We’ve always had an information sharing relationship with Ross (Lyon) and the guys here,” he said.
“I was over here about a year ago just before I started at the Phoenix and spent a few days here and I really enjoyed it.”
Merrick has kept in touch with Freo’s senior coach for a few years and despite Lyon being absent today due to Virgin Australia International Rules Series commitments, he was still able to pick up plenty.
“Ross was pretty keen to look at other sports and get some ideas from soccer and I’m very careful that I don’t try and tell people how to play AFL, I know very little about the game,” Merrick said.
Lyon's rugby influence
“But they’re both team invasion sports so there are ideas you can get from soccer and we have certainly got lots of ideas from AFL football and I got some more ideas today.”
The Wellington coach was able to draw plenty of parallels between the AFL and A-League as he watched on at this morning’s pre-season hitout.
“The generic aspects of team invasion sports are how you condition players to prepare for team play and how you can combine physical training with technical work and some good little 4v2 sessions…you use a handball, we use our feet,” Merrick said.
“There was good running patterns to free up strikers, but the slight difference for us is we have the offside which makes it a little bit easier and we have a little bit less contact which also makes it easier for us.
“But the running pattern work and some of your analysis work, it’s all good information for us.”
Fremantle’s senior development coach/assistant coach Simon Lloyd was on hand to talk the Wellington coach through the session and Merrick was impressed with what he saw.
“Simon’s got a fantastic personality for a coach…he is just great with communication, his ideas on the game and how to get things across are first-class and he was really good enough to spend some time talking to myself, Chris Greenacre (assistant coach) and Jonathan Gould (goalkeeping coach).”
One key factor that affects both Wellington and Fremantle is regular travel throughout the season and Merrick said both clubs could gain more information on how to be better equipped for it.
“This is another area where we can benefit from each other’s knowledge in the physiology of it and the fact that there is a fair amount of physical stress on players when they travel regarding losing fluids, pressure, having the right nutrition, knowing when to sleep, the time difference and that’s another area that I’d like to develop even more.”
