On the eve of Dan Hannebery becoming the third fastest Swan to reach 150 matches, the player who beat him and Adam Goodes to the mark says the game's increasing speed and intensity will make it significantly harder for players to remain consistently available for selection.
Hannebery will notch up his 150th appearance – and, with it, automatic Swans life membership – when Sydney play Brisbane at the Gabba on Sunday. It will have taken the tough midfielder, whose senior career began while he was still a school student, six years and 287 days to reach. Only Goodes and Jared Crouch took less time.
Goodes, who went on to play 372 games, took six years and 103 days to play 150. Crouch, the 2005 premiership-winning midfielder – whose 194 straight games from debut is a league record – took six years and 84 days to achieve the feat.
Crouch said fewer rotations per match were making the game physically more demanding, testing players' abilities to remain injury-free and fresh. However, he said, those demands were being balanced against improvements in sports science, which could be used to pre-empt injuries and aid recovery.
"It's going to be harder but not impossible," Crouch said when asked if future players could reach 150 games at similar pace.
"You always get the athlete who genetically is very good and physically can handle the demands. But, certainly, with the limited rotation, you have to be a certain type of athlete. The days when anyone can play the game are gone."
Crouch said better science meant players were being more closely monitored, which enabled medical staff to better tailor training to individual needs.
"With any sporting teams around the world, those who are able to keep their players on the field the longest tend to have the greatest success. So, science and medicine are incredibly important," he said.
"If you [are] getting more sore or if you're getting closer to becoming injured, they're able to modify training or perhaps advise you to miss a game. Equally, the research into how people heal and recover is also getting better, too."
For all the external factors that impact on a player's ability to compete continuously at the top level, Crouch said the foundation was the individual's respect and care for their body.
"It's massive. If you truly want to play week-in, week-out and you don't want to be a spectator ... your body is your tool of the trade. Your body is what allows you to play this game.
"We all know the right things and wrong things to do. If you ever deviate from that, even a little bit, your body will tell you and you'll miss. If you're good to it, it will allow you to keep going."
Hannebery said he and his teammates were noticing the impact of the rotation policy, which has reduced the number of changes a team can make during a game from 120 to 90.
"I feel the game's probably gone up in intensity," he said.
"Teams are now really wanting to pressure at their utmost intensity and on attack also go as fast as they can. So certainly in both those facets of the game I think it's gone up.
"And, with lack of rotations, I think that correlates to players feeling the pinch a little bit earlier in the week and throughout the season. Teams I think will adjust their training loads and whatnot, but certainly the players from around the competition have felt the effect a little bit. But our fitness staff is first class and we've really dealt with it smartly."
