No it's not. You need strength and conditioning at a high standard if you want to have any hope at a decent AFL career. Blakey and McInerney will become physical liabilities when they reach a point where they can't back up one performance with another, and another. I've seen it with lads I've coached going back to the 80s. It doesn't matter about size but strength matters. The ones who don't have that core strength struggle to get any consistency in their game. They have a stand out performance and you won't see it again for 4-6 weeks. They end up playing with injuries, get battered easy which hinders their performance when they are playing out matches winded. This is not a knock on their talent but rather their capacity to display that talent. Very rarely does a player overcome their lack of core strength.
As for Hayward he is now a 4th yr player and might be physically less imposing than he's ever been, though I wonder how much of that is lack of tenacity and application on his behalf.
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