The Essendon players will visit the Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo – the biggest fish market in the world. A place where the hordes sell 2.268 million kilograms of fish valued at US$28 million every day. It is more than all the other fish markets in the world combined.
""It is absolute chaos. Yelling, screaming, it is just frantic,"" Essendon fitness coach and tour organiser John Quinn said today. ""It is basically a stock market for fish – they are auctioning them. I want the players to pick out one person at that market and follow them because who ever they follow will get their job done despite the chaos. I guarantee them that.""
""I want those players to ask themselves do they get the job done when the pressure is on and when it is chaotic, when the team is five goals down do they find a way to do their job. Do they start looking around for someone else to fix it – that can’t happen at this fish market and it can’t happen in a game of football.""
For Quinn the trip to Japan is nothing new. He has done it before and seen the impact it has on athletes at all levels. He has been very keen to get a group of Essendon players over there for some time.
""It has been in my head for a long time. I have been to Japan probably half a dozen times with athletics and groups ranging from little athletics to Olympians. We had a host of different experiences and the Japanese are most accommodating providing you give them enough time,"" Quinn said.
""The culture in Japan by and large is based on discipline – it is ingrained in every walk of life there. It is about honesty and about strength of character and the importance their culture places on these attributes. It is about the respect they show one another.
""I thought it would be worthwhile taking our players out of the culture at Essendon – and I’m not saying the culture at Essendon is a bad one. We just think that the footy department and playing group can benefit from this education.
""We are good at the physical skills – good at the ball work, tackling, slogging it out on hills and in the gym but we are not as good on the soft skills and we need to develop those aspects. We think we can improve those skills by exposing them to this culture.""
The players’ experiences will be many and varied but Quinn has identified the home visit as the most challenging aspect of the 10-day tour.
""They go into a home for a couple of days where the people can’t speak any English and we have asked them not to learn any English in the lead up or get any friends in that might be more proficient in English,"" Quinn said.
""We have asked them not to change a thing and that includes diet. Don’t suddenly have steak and chips for dinner. We have asked them to keep it as they would normally have it and I think that will be very confronting for a lot of our players.
""It will be right in the players face – they do things very differently to how we do over here. We want players to know what it is like to be in a foreign environment and to not feel comfortable or be able to communicate.
""We think it is important for our would-be leaders to know how that feels and what it can be like as a new player coming into an AFL environment or even as an older player who has never quite clicked. I think that is the biggest challenge. The culture around Essendon can’t be a sometimes thing.""
""They will also do a work placement alongside a Japanese worker and that ranges from working in a TV studio to a meat processing plant. We will ask them to give us feedback on what they saw in that environment.""
