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- Collingwood
It does seem to be a great stadium. I’ve been to one Big Bash game there, and was pretty impressed, although it wasn’t full, which obviously helps the atmosphere.
The investment of the players seemed to be greater than what I recall from previous years.
You can see the elation when an AFL premiership is won. It’s obviously the culmination of at least 10 months’ hard work, often much longer than that, with the same core group. Playing for (say) Richmond or Hawthorn is a key part of the player’s identity, year round, and year after year.
With BBL (or IPL, etc), the competition starts and finishes in a couple of months, seemingly with a short preseason, so players are presumably doing much of their own prep, before jetting in. Some of them probably don’t even know each other, and 2-3 months later they’ve potentially won a grand final, but may never play together or even see each other again. I wonder how much it really means to a DreRuss or the like. I don’t think they have BBL flag reunions.
A couple of the Perth players talked about the stability of the squad, having a core group who return year after year, and spending a lot of time together outside of cricket. All their families were on the ground celebrating, and they all seemed comfortable in each other’s company, as thought it wasn’t unusual to be all together.
The Fox coverage was also well executed - it continued for quite some time, and included interviews of a lot of the players as they did a victory lap. Sometimes coverage of cricket tournaments can end quite abruptly, and it can give the impression that everyone is fairly invested in the result until the end of the match, but they don’t want to watch the presentations or enjoy the afterglow, because they’ve got a train to catch, or want to get to bed.
Last night seemed different to me, and more significant to many of those involved, which I think is encouraging.
The investment of the players seemed to be greater than what I recall from previous years.
You can see the elation when an AFL premiership is won. It’s obviously the culmination of at least 10 months’ hard work, often much longer than that, with the same core group. Playing for (say) Richmond or Hawthorn is a key part of the player’s identity, year round, and year after year.
With BBL (or IPL, etc), the competition starts and finishes in a couple of months, seemingly with a short preseason, so players are presumably doing much of their own prep, before jetting in. Some of them probably don’t even know each other, and 2-3 months later they’ve potentially won a grand final, but may never play together or even see each other again. I wonder how much it really means to a DreRuss or the like. I don’t think they have BBL flag reunions.
A couple of the Perth players talked about the stability of the squad, having a core group who return year after year, and spending a lot of time together outside of cricket. All their families were on the ground celebrating, and they all seemed comfortable in each other’s company, as thought it wasn’t unusual to be all together.
The Fox coverage was also well executed - it continued for quite some time, and included interviews of a lot of the players as they did a victory lap. Sometimes coverage of cricket tournaments can end quite abruptly, and it can give the impression that everyone is fairly invested in the result until the end of the match, but they don’t want to watch the presentations or enjoy the afterglow, because they’ve got a train to catch, or want to get to bed.
Last night seemed different to me, and more significant to many of those involved, which I think is encouraging.
