While Essendon’s Senior Coaching group can boast ten VFL/AFL premierships, the Club’s Physical Performance unit can also lay claim to an impressive resume.

The latest addition to that group is Peter Blanch who has been appointed to the role of Head Physiotherapist. 

Blanch has been involved in elite sport for almost 30 years.

Most recently he worked for Cricket Australia after spending more than 20 years at the Australian Institute of Sport.

His appointment at the Bombers marks a return to an industry he worked in early in his career.

“AFL is a tremendous game, it has a tremendous place in the hearts of Australians,” Blanch said. 

“The Bombers are one of the historical sporting clubs of the world.

“They’ve been around for over 100 years, an extraordinary history of success, an extraordinary place in the hearts of their supporters.

“So I think it’s a tremendous opportunity to be involved.”

Throughout his career, Blanch has been to three Olympic Games and five Commonwealth games. 

He also played an important role in helping cricketers overcome overuse injuries.

“Obviously they are different games, but a lot of the things, especially when we talk about overuse injuries – the very definition of overuse is you are loading somebody up more than what they are prepared for," he said.

“That concept doesn’t change whether you’re a fast bowler, football player or a swimmer.

“One of the areas we’ve become better in - and AFL’s probably better than most sports in the world – is keeping track of the loads we put in to our players and making sure we progress them well.

“That doesn’t mean we don’t train hard – you must train hard and the best thing to be resilient form injury is training a lot.

“We do a lot of work around how hard people are training and how they’re responding to that training.”

Blanch has already commenced work with Essendon and was in attendance as the young Bombers underwent their first time trial yesterday.