Newly-appointed Brock-Burrum coach Brendan Roberson has introduced several new innovations as he strives to keep the Saints' impressive recent finals record intact.
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Roberson has a reputation as one of the more eccentric coaches seen in local football after having previous coaching roles at Lavington, Thurgoona and most recently North Albury.
Always thinking outside the box, Roberson revealed he recently purchased an Olympic sized trampoline which the players utilise at most training sessions to build confidence of being airborne.
"I've introduced a trampoline at training as a tool to help the players with marking and ruck work," Roberson said.
"The game plan is to get the footy and ruck work is a huge part of that.
"My theory is that jumping on a trampoline gives you confidence of being airborne and having your feet off the ground like when a ruckman contests a bounce or a forward flies for a mark.
"If you have a confident ruckman running into the ruck contest, it's only going to help win the contest.
"It's the same principle with a contested mark.
"Personally I grew up with a trampoline at home at Mangoplah and I think it works.
"I purchased the trampoline for $4000 with my own money after I couldn't convince the committee to outlay the money.
"I guess it's one of those things where people want to see the results for themselves before they have the confidence that it works.
"I'm confident that it will."
Roberson revealed the club recently purchased 50 footballs.
"What the club has invested in is footballs," he said.
"So I've got a footy per player, plus some and we do a lot of skill work."
Roberson also revealed he plans to have extensive match-day footage of every home and away match and some training sessions to help educate the players.
"The club bought me an AI camera which is an artificial intelligence camera that has three lenses on a five metre stand," he said.
"At the moment I use the camera to video some training sessions.
"I also intend to hire an experienced camera operator on match-day to video our games which will be live-streamed.
"It will be as good as quality as what All In Sports are doing in the Hume league at the moment.
"We will then send the video off to a company in Melbourne that compiles the data and does individual highlight packages for each player as well as the stats.
"Players being able to watch themselves is an excellent self-coaching tool in my opinion."
The Saints are the only club in the competition to have played finals every season since 2010 and have been as successful as Osborne during that period with both clubs winning four flags.
However an exodus of players over the off-season including Ronnie Boulton, Jeremy Luff, Harry Weaven, Keith Tallent and Jack Schilg has most league followers predicting the Saints to be on the slide this season.
