Some have said the travel factor for WA sporting teams is overstated. This researcher says otherwise (2024)

The travel discrepancy in Australian sport has been an accepted inequality for a long time.

Think back to 1996 and 1999 when West Coast was forced to play "home" semi-finals at the MCG, against Essendon and Carlton.

Or when Geelong had to trudge 74 kilometres to Melbourne to host Collingwood at the MCG in a qualifying final, after finishing as minor premiers.

Or how Collingwood — not to pick on the Magpies specifically — will leave Victoria just once between now and the AFL finals, while fellow finals hopeful Fremantle will play in Victoria, New South Wales and Tasmania.

A fair amount of this can be attributed to the heavy weighting of teams in Victoria, which will always see Melbourne sides' play away games in their home city.

But this season has seen something of shift in attitude to the unevenness of the competition's structure.

'The greatest inequity'

Dockers chief executive Simon Garlick and West Coast counterpart Don Pyke met with AFL boss Andrew Dillon ahead of the 2024 season, with travel a key part of the agenda.

"The greatest inequity that exists in our game is the discrepancy in travel and particularly that of West Coast and ourselves," Garlick told ABC Perth in March.

"It’s no one’s fault, it’s just the way the competition has evolved.

"There’s 14 teams on the east coast and there’s two teams 3000km away on the west coast of Western Australia."

His thoughts have been echoed by Dockers coach Justin Longmuir, and Gold Coast's Damian Hardwick.

The three-time Richmond Premiership coach acknowledged the toll travel had on his players last month, just 11 games into his tenure in Queensland.

In contrast, former St Kilda player and ABC expert Nathan Burke said sides who travel get the benefits when at home.

"I get a bit sick of our interstate teams whingeing about how much they travel," he said.

"Virtually every second week, you're playing a team who travel, who are less experienced at travelling than what you are.

"If I'm West Coast Eagles, every second week I'm playing a team from the other side of the country.

"So what you lose by travelling over here (Melbourne), you actually gain a bit back by playing a travelling team every single week.

"No one ever mentions that."

Earlier in the season, there were reports some clubs felt the granting of 12 business class seats on all flights to and from the eastern states helped nullify any travel disadvantage the WA clubs had.

Research suggests travel a factor

West Coast and Fremantle aren't the only professional sport teams in Western Australia — the Perth Wildcats, Perth Lynx, West Coast Fever, Perth Glory, Western Force, WA Cricket and Perth Heat also contend with interstate trips.

The Force travel the furthest in any one go, playing Super Rugby matches in New Zealand.

The organisation has a researcher, Kanon Uchiama from the University of Western Australia, embedded in its program to study some of the impacts.

"When you look out into what's out there, in terms of the knowledge so far, the main thing that travel always seems to come back to is sleep," she told ABC Perth's Extra Time program.

"There are a lot of factors that come about with travel that disrupts the sleep of a team, and when a team doesn't sleep properly, that's when you start to see a myriad of issues start to appear, not just from a performance perspective, but also a recovery perspective."

Force players wore sleep tracking watches, and performed cognitive and physical tests while travelling, in an attempt to understand how a change in sleep was affecting their ability to perform.

"We were able to use one of those new sleep technologies to uncover some information around the stages of sleep, and one of the things we found is your REM sleep — really important around the mood and the psyche — that's kind of affected post travel," she said.

"We're starting to get some insight on how these stages of sleep change across a week of Super Rugby, and how certain factors like travel, or even just playing a game, might affect these certain sleep stages."

Length and direction matter

Uchiama said Western Australian sides were more disadvantaged by travel, due to the need to head east to matches.

"One that doesn't get talked about often is direction. It's known to be harder to travel to the east coast than travelling west," she said.

"It's harder to travel and adapt to a time zone shift that goes forward instead of just going backwards. It's harder for us to fall asleep at night, and in the morning it's hard to get up."

Uchiama said other factors can contribute to lessened performance on the road, including changed routines and different training facilities.

"Things like your million-dollar training and recovery facilities and your access to all your staff and your support network and nutrition, hydration, sleep routines that you might have at home, when you're on the road, or when you go away on tour, it's just that little bit harder to access," she said.

The debate on a more balanced sporting landscape will rage on — sides on the east coast are unlikely to go quietly when a perceived competitive advantage is being threatened, while teams seeking a fairer fixture will continue beating the drums until something changes.

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