We missed this snippet of news the first time around because we were out in the field on assignment and doing valuable pre-season reconnaisance elsewhere. So we've only had it brought to our attention in the last week.

It concerns new St Kilda coach Scott Watters and his Circle of Trust - or, as it's been called elsewhere, the Magic Circle or Watters' Wheel.

Essentially, this revolutionary new coaching technique involves players gathering in a circle, linking arms, looking each other in the eye, chanting incantations by the light of a full moon and offering up sacrifices to the Gods. No, I made that last bit up.

But the first part would seem to be true: before every training session, the St Kilda players will form a circle (see picture, above) and talk about what they're going to do in the upcoming session. After their training run, they link up and do the same thing again, this time reviewing their work on the track.

Watters apparently employed the bonding technique in his time as coach of Subiaco in the WAFL and says it is about players facing up to each other.

''In a lot of team sports, it's about trust,'' he said. ''There's a lot of symbolism with a circle. They get the opportunity to look each other in the eye, set their goals for training and then, immediately post-training, they get the chance to reflect on what they've just done.

''Within that opportunity different players have different opportunities to say what's on their mind ... It's a sharing time. They get an opportunity to communicate."

Designated players speak during the huddle. ''It is about maximising every minute,'' Watters said. ''We want a minute-by-minute culture at our footy club where we're taking every opportunity. That just gives them a chance to set goals and reset goals. They're connected. They've got to stay connected as a group.''

Watters said the St Kilda players had embraced the changes made after the departure of long-term coach Ross Lyon at the end of the 2011 season, including the huddle. ''It's another one of the things they've attacked from day one. They feel like they're getting something out of it, and that's important.''

Now call me old-fashioned, call me a dinosaur even, but I reckon I've heard it all now.

''Symbolism of a circle'', ''Looking each other in the eye'', ''Sharing time'', ''Minute by minute culture''. What is this - some kind of crackpot cult or a footy club?

How would Tony Lockett, Geoff Cunningham, Carl Ditterich, Robbie Muir and Greg Burns have reacted to all that modern-age claptrap?

The only ''symbolism of a circle'' they were interested in was their meat pie after training. The only time Muir would have had his arms around a teammate's shoulder was in the process of throttling him for the ball. And ''sharing time''? That was when Plugger, Danny Frawley and Joffa Cunningham piled into the same ute from Ballarat for the trip to Moorabbin.

Now he's a lovely bloke, 'Smurf' Watters. One of the game's good guys. Very stiff to miss out on West Coast's 1992 premiership. And clearly he comes well-regarded after his stints at Subiaco and Collingwood.

But which coaching manual did he get this mumbo-jumbo from?

It's the kind of new-age gibberish that gnarly old-timers might listen to and then, with their face screwed up, say: eh?

In fact, that rumbling sound you hear in the distance could well be Jock McHale, Norm Smith and Allan Jeans rolling in their graves.

Training at Collingwood in the 1920s involved rolling around in the mud, eating a bucket of nails then retiring to the sheds to have a fag and sink a keg of Melbourne Bitter - each. Training at Hawthorn in the 1970s under John Kennedy was only marginally more enlightened: players had to get through a plate of Bobby Yeoman's curried sausages first, before tackling the keg.

Now, players are doing ring-a-ring-a-rosy, not just after training but before as well. Good grief.

Somewhere between Yeoman's curried sausages, 'Whale' Roberts dragging on a durry at half-time and Denis Pagan's occasional North Melbourne training sessions at the pub, we've missed something.

Is this the caring, sharing, warm and fuzzy approach that the modern AFL coach has to adopt to get the best out of his Gen Y and Z players? Maybe it is. Maybe we are hopelessly behind the times. Maybe it'll work a treat.

If Watters' Magic Circle can indeed conjure a miracle in 2012, we'll be first in the queue to congratulate him. As things stand, though, we'll remain sceptical and, on the eve of Christmas, resolutely Scrooge-like.