In any competitive sporting environment, it is crucial to a team's success to have the maximum number of their players free from injury and illness and available for selection in as many games as possible throughout the season. The training programme of the club, and therefore training load, can have an impact on the incidence of injury and illness amongst the players. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between the training load and the incidence of injury and illness over an entire pre-season at an Australian Football League (AFL) club. Sixteen players were subjects; all full time professional male AFL players (mean + or - standard deviation; age 23.8 + or - 5.1 years; height 188.9 + or - 7.4 m; weight 90.9 + or - 9.2 kg). A longitudinal research design was employed, where training load, injury and illness were monitored over a 15 week pre-season and Pearson Correlation Coefficients were used to examine relationships.