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High-performance coach Andrew Russell is a 25-year, premiership-piloting veteran in preparing AFL bodies for action.
“Birth certificates are irrelevant for people in my role,” he told The Roar.
Collingwood’s Steele Sidebottom’s start to 2025 is the live example of Russell’s belief.
After one game, he was the epitome of how the game had gone past Collingwood’s gamble on age.
Now seven games down, the historically old Magpies sit atop the ladder, and the 34-year-old Sidebottom sits equal top with running mate Nick Daicos on the AFLCA coaches’ votes table.
Sidebottom’s unexpected renaissance in playing career-best football is not a one-off.
Blowing out the candles on your 30th birthday cake was once symbolic of the final flicker of an AFL career, yet for the game’s best, it has become an extended sweet spot.
The numbers tell a story.
In last weekend’s corresponding fixture 20 seasons ago, there were 30 players selected in the 16 AFL teams who were 30 years or older, or 8.5% of that week’s playing population.
Ten years on, and with the addition of two new teams, that number had risen marginally to 41, or 10.35% of players for ANZAC round 2015.
Now in 2025, it has effectively doubled from 20 years ago.
Last weekend, 68 players who’d passed 30 took the field, making up 16.42% of all AFL players who laced a boot.
Steele Sidebottom celebrates a goal. (Photo by Morgan Hancock/AFL Photos/Getty Images)
Last weekend was not a one-off spike; the week prior, 73 ‘senior citizens’ appeared.
For comparison, in 2005 Robert Harvey was the oldest player plying his trade – there were 11 players older than him who played last weekend.
Russell, who, after time with Essendon, Port Adelaide, Hawthorn and Carlton, has partnered with his sports CEO wife Leigh to form their own leadership and performance firm, Russell Performance Co.
He says this is a by-product of the specialisation in training for older players.
“The high-end talented players are now paying well into their mid-30s because of their individualised, personalised management programs,” Russell said.
“The ability to monitor external load has improved through GPS devices, so if you start from the end of the season, the collaboration from your high-performance managers, your physios and your doctors has become very well aligned.
“From there, you get to reset every athlete. You know he can do 80% of the pre-season, and the coaches say yes.”
The older an athlete is, the more data on training and injury history is available. The puzzle of keeping an older player fit comes with so many more clues.
He added that those who have avoided a chronic issue to a part of their bodies are more likely to play well into their 30s, but there are exceptions too.
“A guy like Shaun Burgoyne had a chronic knee injury – we worked out what load his body could handle, and we never did any more than that,” Russell explained.
Sidebottom and his 37-year-old teammate Scott Pendlebury, who still seems to move and play with all the balletic lightness he had as an 18-year-old, are the poster boys for the footy pensioners.
Once, clubs would grudgingly carry one or two 30-plus types for experience and leadership, but now they are winning games.
In 2005, three players over 30 finished in the top 40 of the Brownlow Medal.
After Round 7, there are 10 in the top 40 of the aforementioned coaches’ votes table.
Patrick Dangerfield. (Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)
Sidebottom, Lachie Neale, Toby Greene, Tom Liberatore, Max Gawn, Jack Sinclair, Patrick Dangerfield, Jesse Hogan, Jack Macrae and Jarrod Witts are playing match-winning roles rather than ‘bit parts’.
It’s consistent with how world sport has evolved in the last decade.
Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Serena Williams won Grand Slam titles in their mid-to-late 30s.
LeBron James performs at an elite level (and alongside his son) at 40.
Jimmy Anderson opened the bowling for England at 41, while the all-time Australian bowling foursome continues to spark their team beyond 30, and at a combined age of 137.
Despite the criticism from some quarters on long-term contracts, the trend for players to play longer and better is clearly causing a rethink on the career projections of players.
Once upon a time, most 30-year-olds were consigned to one-year deals. Now pundits are speculating that Marcus Bontempelli, who will join the 30+ brigade in November, could command a six-year deal to celebrate the milestone.
“I have little interest in how old a player is, it’s their body that’s important, not their actual age,” Russell said.
“Some guys are 25 and their body age is 40. Some guys are 35 and their body age is 25.
“All we look at when advising list managers and coaches is ‘can a player tolerate the training load’, you have to tolerate that to tolerate the game load.”
(Photo by Daniel Kalisz/Getty Images)
Some bodies will break, yet trends tell us many will go beyond what we expected.
What this doesn’t mean is that the game has suddenly only become the domain of the experienced.
Year-on-year, we are seeing draftees come into the league physically and mentally prepared to perform better and more consistently than teenagers of generations past.
But the supposed peak performance curve, historically seen as between 23-28 years of age, is flattening considerably.
When it comes to the role within a team, age (young or old) ain’t nothing but a number.
On SEN Radio’s ‘Whateley’ program this week, Nathan Buckley, who himself maintained excellence into his mid-30s in a previous era, said that he now believes that system eclipses talent in today’s football.
In an increasingly tactically complex game, older players whose bodies are managed expertly and have playing roles tailored to their physical capabilities may thrive because they have the smarts to process and understand what to do best.
It also may be the brain rather than the body that determines how long a player goes on for.
“For a lot of guys, what’s stopping them is not their bodies, but their minds,” Russell said.
“They get tired, they lose motivation, and they want to do other things.”
So, for those players approaching 30 and what was once football mortality, the message is clear.
If you place your body in the hands of Russell’s ilk and the mind is willing, the smart will survive.
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