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Injuries: the luck of the Draw.


dieter

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Before the season commenced I looked through the Injury list of all the clubs and noted that, as usual, the Richmond camp was more or less injury free, alright give or take an injury or two, as Leonard Cohen might have put it. I wondered about Melbourne's Injury management and came to the conclusion that it's a bloody long straw to blame professionals like  Misson for the bad luck we've had with injuries.

The first two games of the season have been not very kind to Richmond and kind of substantiates my hunch that it is the luck of the draw. It's almost scary, as though it's in the hands of the Injury Gods.

I dislike the way Rance plays - his sneaky brutality and his Bollywood diving capers -  I've never been a Riewoldt fan - his cousin seems a much more sympathetic human being - but I do wish them a speedy recovery. That's the kind of fellow I am, I suppose. 

In the meantime, draw your breaths and pray to that the Injury Gods have mercy on us.

I am, note, not religious, maybe superstitious...

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15 hours ago, dieter said:

Before the season commenced I looked through the Injury list of all the clubs and noted that, as usual, the Richmond camp was more or less injury free, alright give or take an injury or two, as Leonard Cohen might have put it. I wondered about Melbourne's Injury management and came to the conclusion that it's a bloody long straw to blame professionals like  Misson for the bad luck we've had with injuries.

The first two games of the season have been not very kind to Richmond and kind of substantiates my hunch that it is the luck of the draw. It's almost scary, as though it's in the hands of the Injury Gods.

I dislike the way Rance plays - his sneaky brutality and his Bollywood diving capers -  I've never been a Riewoldt fan - his cousin seems a much more sympathetic human being - but I do wish them a speedy recovery. That's the kind of fellow I am, I suppose. 

In the meantime, draw your breaths and pray to that the Injury Gods have mercy on us.

I am, note, not religious, maybe superstitious...

Knees, ankles, broken bones etc are just bad luck.  But I had an interesting chat with a conditioning coach at an unnamed AFL club over preseason.  He shared what they were doing quite openly.  Hopefully he didn’t think it was confidential.  I won’t name the club just in case. 

This club had an horrendous injury list last year.  I asked him the same question re bad luck, and his view is it’s a combination of bad management and bad luck.  He told me they did a massive review in the middle of last year and changed lots of things.  They have always been like most clubs measuring GPS stuff and looking st loads.  But they have taken the science stuff to a new level.  Players muscle strength is now measured using some kind of machines before every training session and compared to normal.  They do pin [censored] blood tests regularly as apparently they can tell when muscles are more vulnerable. They measure players sleep patterns.  They video players running at training and it automatically measures gait to look for overstriding so they can correct it.  All the data is reviewed all the time to try and work out when to drop training loads.  He said they are working with a Uni to have AI analyse all the data, and believes in 5 years they’ll be even better than their current interpretation of the data.  I was interested to see that they went into the season without a single soft tissue injury.  I’ll be interested to see over the season if that was just good luck or whether all of this sports science they are doing so far is making a difference.  

We have had a lot of soft tissue injuries over summer.  And really bad history with feet.  Potentially it’s time for Melbourne to get new ideas in.  Or maybe it’s just bad luck.  I don’t know. 

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I wish them to be out as long as possible, not because of any hate or dislike but because it makes things that much harder for a flag contender. A)they need to cover for those 2 bookends and b) the other players have to lift and shoulder more of the load meaning they will tire more during the season. = hopefully a an easier path for us to a flag.

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9 minutes ago, Cards13 said:

I wish them to be out as long as possible, not because of any hate or dislike but because it makes things that much harder for a flag contender. A)they need to cover for those 2 bookends and b) the other players have to lift and shoulder more of the load meaning they will tire more during the season. = hopefully a an easier path for us to a flag.

Unless the injury gods cast a dark spell over us... as they say, careful what we wish for.

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1 hour ago, Watson11 said:

Knees, ankles, broken bones etc are just bad luck.  But I had an interesting chat with a conditioning coach at an unnamed AFL club over preseason.  He shared what they were doing quite openly.  Hopefully he didn’t think it was confidential.  I won’t name the club just in case. 

This club had an horrendous injury list last year.  I asked him the same question re bad luck, and his view is it’s a combination of bad management and bad luck.  He told me they did a massive review in the middle of last year and changed lots of things.  They have always been like most clubs measuring GPS stuff and looking st loads.  But they have taken the science stuff to a new level.  Players muscle strength is now measured using some kind of machines before every training session and compared to normal.  They do pin [censored] blood tests regularly as apparently they can tell when muscles are more vulnerable. They measure players sleep patterns.  They video players running at training and it automatically measures gait to look for overstriding so they can correct it.  All the data is reviewed all the time to try and work out when to drop training loads.  He said they are working with a Uni to have AI analyse all the data, and believes in 5 years they’ll be even better than their current interpretation of the data.  I was interested to see that they went into the season without a single soft tissue injury.  I’ll be interested to see over the season if that was just good luck or whether all of this sports science they are doing so far is making a difference.  

We have had a lot of soft tissue injuries over summer.  And really bad history with feet.  Potentially it’s time for Melbourne to get new ideas in.  Or maybe it’s just bad luck.  I don’t know. 

Measuring sleep patterns is an interesting one.

We’ve recently had our share of talented players with party habits. Hard to maintain if the club is monitoring your sleep.

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3 hours ago, Wrecker45 said:

Measuring sleep patterns is an interesting one.

We’ve recently had our share of talented players with party habits. Hard to maintain if the club is monitoring your sleep.

From memory, we've been doing that for a while, but only through a daily survey, so it's up to the players to judge and report their own sleep.

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Putting aside our ability to condition players to avoid soft tissue injuries question need to be asked about recruiting players who are injury prone. At the moment the recruitment of Lever and May are bomb. Lever had known knee problems was it worth the risk. So far the answer is a resounding no. How was this recruitment decision assessed. Before I get howled down about May as a regular at Suns games he suffered from numerous soft tissue injuries beyond the fact he is slow and lazy. His groin injury come as no surprise. If these trade decision blow up it will set Melbourne back years. Let hope they got it right but to me the risk was bigger than the reward on these trades.

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2 hours ago, spirit of norm smith said:

We need a fit best 22 up and running.  Already 5/6 out on my best 22 and it shows. 

May - any update?? Groin??

We need more running players in the 22...   run & carry is bigger now, to support teammates,  and to deliver forward.  We are missing both Vandenberg's pressure,  and Jimmy Hannan's mobility/agility,  and smart open play.

A time to Stretch our boundaries.

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2 hours ago, Deesprate said:

Putting aside our ability to condition players to avoid soft tissue injuries question need to be asked about recruiting players who are injury prone. At the moment the recruitment of Lever and May are bomb. Lever had known knee problems was it worth the risk. So far the answer is a resounding no. How was this recruitment decision assessed. Before I get howled down about May as a regular at Suns games he suffered from numerous soft tissue injuries beyond the fact he is slow and lazy. His groin injury come as no surprise. If these trade decision blow up it will set Melbourne back years. Let hope they got it right but to me the risk was bigger than the reward on these trades.

Too soon on may with the groin.

May I think, isn't used to training and running so hard during Preseason. so his body will like adjust slowly to the extra intensity.  He also might need to trim, just a little.

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