- Former VFLW player Eloise Gardner now banned from happy skinfold test
- AFL made decision to protect mental health of emerging players
- Commentators Matthew Lloyd and Kane Cornes were incredulous.
Essendon star Eloise Gardner has lifted the lid on her health battles as she hit back at football legend Matthew Lloyd for criticizing the league’s recent decision to ban skinfold testing.
Gardner took to social media after Lloyd and fellow commentator Kane Cornes condemned the AFL’s decision.
Have a good trip! “The outrage over this is atrocious,” she tweeted.
‘Between my first and second season of VFLW I lost 10kg, became obsessed with tracking my weight and food to the point of being on the verge of having an eating disorder and exercised too much.
‘The pressures on young athletes are already enough.
Essendon star Eloise Gardner (pictured left, holding ball) has hit back at Matthew Lloyd after the AFL legend criticized the league’s controversial decision to ban skinfold testing.
Essendon Bombers champion Lloyd (pictured with wife Lisa) declared the “world has gone mad” after the AFL officially banned skinfold testing.
‘I remember being celebrated for how hard I worked during the offseason and the praise I received.
‘Very quickly I incorporated the belief that my weight determined my self-esteem.
“I have no doubt that my obsession with pushing my body to the limit, without fueling it properly and neglecting other aspects of my mental and emotional well-being, was a key factor in my current chronic illness.”
Gardner suffered so much from chronic fatigue syndrome that she was bedridden for more than a month.
“This disease is already complicated enough, if we add to this being asthmatic and having ADHD which, outside of medication, is largely controlled by exercise that I can no longer do… it adds an additional complication,” he wrote on his blog . .
Gardner added that at the time she was “wearing her weight loss like a fucking gold medal” and couldn’t see that she was actually unhealthy.
His lengthy tweet was in response to Bombers champion Lloyd declaring that “the world has gone mad” following confirmation that the AFL had banned skinfold testing.
‘[In my career] I was above [skinfold] level over a period of time,” Lloyd said on the Channel Nine show. Ranked football.
“It was a big wake-up call… and then I was training for the next six Sundays until I recovered.”
Cornes questioned whether banning skinfold testing on emerging players was the best way to prepare them for the rigors of professional sport.
“You have to ask yourself if that best prepares them for the challenges they will face once they enter the system,” he said.
Commentator Kane Cornes also disagreed with the AFL’s decision on skinfold testing.
Skinfold is one of the oldest tests used in sports to determine body fat and muscle composition
The AFL’s decision is primarily aimed at protecting the mental health of young players and limiting the stigma around weight and body fat, in addition to the notion that all athletes must present a certain level of fitness in training. .
According to veteran journalist Caroline Wilson, no AFL club was consulted about the decision, which was revealed in a memo.
Essendon boss Xavier Campbell also found the AFL’s decision puzzling.
“I could understand it at a grassroots level, I think there is some merit to it, but we are a performance-based industry,” he told SEN.
“I’m not sure we have skinfold metrics that are included in contracts these days, but it’s still a big part of the testing that high performance performs on players.
‘There are different ways to approach it, body mass index and all that… but I would say there still has to be some type of assessment that needs to be included in that part of the game.’