OFTEN we hear of stories of the sacrifices made by aspiring athletes to reach the highest level, but rarely do we hear of the personal sacrifices made by their coaches throughout the entirety of an athlete’s career.
“The sacrifices we had to make for our family and for our friends – that’s part of the job and it comes with the job in this high-performance industry,” backline assistant coach Christina Polatajko said on the Rundown podcast.
“When you’re part of the Blues you just love coming to work, and the best thing about the AFLW is the way we interact with the men’s program, being able to speak to line coaches, attend some of their team meetings, line meetings.
“Those sacrifices [then become] worth it because you get so much learning and development to make us better – and when we become better, we make our players better.”
Polatajko – known as ‘Polly’ within the walls of IKON Park – joined Carlton in the 2023 off-season alongside Senior Coach Mathew Buck, having previously had assistant coaching roles with Hawthorn VFLW and the Calder Cannons under-18 girls’ program in the Coates Talent League.
To assist with her development in her new role, Polatajko was also involved in Carlton’s VFLW program this year alongside AFLW senior assistant coach Glenn Strachan – who this year added the roles of VFLW Senior Coach and Head of Development to his resume.
The focus this year? To create one collective Carlton Women’s program.
“It was something we went after pretty hard,” Strachan said.
“I thought the best way to do it was to bring them together as much as possible, whether that be training, games, functions, stuff like that.
“I think also if you look now, our 10 train-ons are all from our VFLW program – that’s something we went after and starting to see some real fruition from it.”
Polatajko added how the connection between the two programs is setting up the next generation of Carlton VFLW talent.
“That’s the best thing about our program at the moment, the real one collective women’s program,” she said.
“It’s not the VFLW, or the AFLW, it’s the one women’s program and I think we’re really lucky to have [Strachan] and ‘Bucky’ taking charge.
“We’re in really strong hands for the seasons to come.”
Like Polatajko, Strachan has also made his own personal sacrifices, thankfully understood by his wife, an elite athlete herself.
“Time is the thing you sacrifice,” he said.
“Whether that’s getting there earlier or staying later – it’s a lot of time and social situations that other people are normally going to that maybe you miss out on, but I’ve always seen it as time well spent if you’re getting better.”
With “the longest pre-season of all time” now having finally coming to an end, the two assistant coaches have their eyes set on Carlton’s first-ever match up against Hawthorn.
The Hawks are entering their third year in the AFLW competition with a new Senior Coach and system, something the Blues went through themselves this time last year.
“I feel like we’re a little bit better prepared to know what we’re going to come up against,” Strachan said.
“We’ve seen across the pre-season with their match simulation and practice match they’re going to try and play a really exciting, fast brand of footy, so it’s going to be great to come up against them and match that.”
Adding to that, Polatajko expressed her excitement to finally kick off the 2024 season this weekend.
“It’s going to be a great game on Sunday. If we play our system the way we want to play, I think the results will take care of themselves,” she said.
