While the AFL industry appeared in recess, the race for innovation saw club representatives throughout the competition cast their web across the globe over the break in a bid to gain an elusive competitive edge.

Collingwood Development Manager Craig McRae proved no exception, joining an AFL Coaches’ Association delegation in an expedition over the Pacific Ocean to North America designed to garner insights from elite sporting organisations spanning college to the NFL ranks.

Alongside representatives from Hawthorn, Fremantle and West Coast, California’s Stanford University was McRae’s first port of call, hosting the touring party for a four-day stint embedded in the institution’s lauded athletic department.

Fielding 36 teams across a vast array of inter-college competitions, the sheer scale of Stanford’s diverse athletic pursuits is significant, but for McRae, it was the university’s commitment to academia which proved particularly noteworthy.

“The whole experience of seeing a program like that was an eye opener to start with,” McRae said.

“However, the thing that Stanford Uni have which other colleges don’t is students are required to have a 90 per cent academic record to get in, plus the elite sporting prowess to receive a scholarship, which sets them apart, and the thing they hang their hat on.”

A trip over the US border to Vancouver and the Canucks of the NHL was next on the agenda, providing an experience which McRae described as arguably the highlight of the trip. Welcomed into the franchise’s inner sanctum, McRae was offered a unique look into sporting operations at major league level, enjoying unparalleled access to its preparation ahead of a clash against the San Jose Sharks.

“I think that was probably the gold for me, I really enjoyed that part of the trip,” McRae said.

“We sat in what was almost like a match committee for them before the match, and the opportunity to compare tactics of different sports was exciting. We met their doctors, toured facilities, and their overwhelming hospitality was incredible really.”

McRae then journeyed south along the west coast to arrive at Seattle, home of the NFL’s Seahawks, a franchise whose supporters rank among the most raucous in US professional sport.

“The (Seattle) home game was amazing. There were 70,000 (people in attendance) and every time the opposition had the ball, they had to call time outs as they couldn’t hear, the noise was amazing,” McRae said.

“Prior to that, we got to experience their pre-game meetings, meet coach Pete Carroll, a legend of the NFL. We spent over an hour with their offensive coordinator, again picking his brain about things they do, watching them train and saw the game the next day.

“We returned the day after the game for the post-game and spoke to recruiting and looked how they did all that.”

Ohio State University and its rampant Buckeyes was the final stop of the journey, one which according to McRae, served to emphasise AFL inhabits rare territory in the realm of elite performance.

“It does give you a lot of affirmation that we are doing a lot of things right, particularly when I went to Vancouver, where the development was pretty raw, and I thought, ‘wow, we’re pretty advanced in terms of how we develop our young players’,” McRae said.

“I was also able to identify small incremental changes we could potentially adopt, or at least explore the possibilities of going down that path.”