Bulldog Bonding A Quantum Leap For Football

THE SUNDAY AGE

Sunday January 24, 1993

Gary Tippet

LAST year it was the Adelaide Crows hot-footing it across burning coals. This year, the latest thing in ``motivational" training has players literally jumping in anticipation of the new season.

Despite the best efforts of the club, and in particular coach Terry Wheeler, to keep it secret, `The Sunday Age' can reveal that almost the entire senior squad of the Footscray Football Club will today leap 1000 metres from a plane into the sea off Williamstown.

But fans need not fear. The Bulldogs will not be jumping to conclusions.

Yesterday more than 40 of the club's high-flyers and senior coaching staff were in intense training at the Commando Skydivers Inc parachute school at Pakenham, nervously preparing for football's first ever static-line parachute jump into Port Phillip Bay.

The jump is designed to be an exercise in overcoming fear, a demonstration of team spirit and an opportunity for further bonding.

But right up to Friday night, coach Wheeler was denying any knowledge of it.

Contacted by sports editor Ken Merrigan, Mr Wheeler emphatically denied knowing anything about persistent rumors that the club was planning a great leap downward.

``A rumor about skydiving? No, not at all," he said.

``I'd love to be involved in it, I'd love to know about it. But we've got too much going on in footy to be involved in that." Mr Wheeler said skydiving did not appeal as a pre-season drill, ``not with the Blue Boys coming up in less than 20 days time".

``We are going on a fitness camp for Saturday only, just up to the Watsonia Army base, that's all we do," he said. ``We've done that each year now for the last three years, go up and spend a day there.

``There's not too much new in the world of footy ... We're just head down and bum up." But Mr Wheeler was livid when the `The Sunday Age' yesterday discovered the Bulldogs at the skydiving school, where players including Doug Hawkins, Brian Royal, Peter Foster and Brownlow Medallist Scott Wynd were broken into three teams for instruction from the school's training officers.

He angrily refused to talk, eventually asking for us to be evicted from the property.

``No. No way. I'm saying nothing. Just go away, go away now!" he said.

Commando Skydivers' chief training instructor, Mr Colin Holt, said the school had been contracted by the club to conduct a two-day training course for the Bulldogs' senior squad, culminating in a ``water descent" off the coast at Williamstown between 10am and 3pm today.

``The drop into the sea has been chosen because, being athletes, and footballers in particular, they don't want to suffer any lower limb injuries," Mr Holt said. ``If you land on the land, people do get sprained ankles, broken legs and God knows what else.

``So it's a lot safer on the water and a lot more forgiving if you make a mistake with the parachute. Hitting the water in a parachute doesn't cause a problem. It's a lot easier for them and a lot safer for them in their profession." Mr Holt said the players would be taken to the jump site in small groups, with two aircraft making two trips each. He said a number of rescue boats, equipped with survival gear, would be waiting to pick up the players off Williamstown beach.

He said this was the first football team that had asked for parachute jumping as part of their pre-season training. ``The concept is to bond them together. You can obviously see that there are advantages in that it's very similar to, say, playing a major game. You've got a lot of apprehension and nerves and it gets you used to that sort of situation and doing what the coach tells you." Despite the reluctance of the club to comment on the unique training drill, it's safe to say the players' apprehension and nerves were not helped yesterday when an instructor at the school badly crashed about 50 metres from where they were being instructed.

The instructor, who Mr Holt said was a veteran of more than 1000 jumps, received serious head and leg injuries and was airlifted to Dandenong Hospital.

The accident occurred when the instructor and a female student were executing an accelerated free-fall jump. Mr Holt said the accident was a result of human error.