It’s noble of you to call on support for the clubs fitness program.
I felt it was reasonable to question the clubs new focus on repeat sprinting on growing young bodies. You choose to spin and ridicule it.
I haven’t been questioning the uncontrollable injuries or the number of injuries per se. And It’s a pointless exercise comparing the injury numbers with other clubs, as there are so many factors that come into it. The club will assess our own injuries case by case.
I believe there are legitimate question marks around the injuries and handling of certain players.
Despite your “nothing to see here” attitude, I am confident that the club will be taking the soft tissue and overuse injuries seriously and looking at what can be done better next year, and there would be a healthy tension within the club.
I for one enjoy reading the alternative perspectives of others.
Firstly, my post wasn't just directed at you, there's multiple people with similar approaches.
As for my approach, It's not a "nothing to see here attitude", it's a belief that we don't hire incompetent staff or staff who are negligent in their duties. Folks on these boards (not singling you out, talking generally) act as if the club isn't professionally run or at times lacks basic competence. It'd be borderline insulting to some of those professionals at best.
Your "take the soft tissue injuries seriously" comment above infers that they need to be doing something different to normal. You've made assumptions about "overuse" injuries. Have you got the medical files? Do you know that's the diagnosis or the direct cause? Do you not think the club would be taking every injury seriously? Looking at the specifics of each individual person and their tailor made program and seeing what they need to do to help that person build strength in areas their body isn’t coping with? Would there ever be a time a club wouldn't be analysing things and taking them seriously?
We strap GPS units to our players to measure how much they move. The players would be talking to staff saying they've got an ache here, tightness there.
Do people think our experts just happen to miss a stress fracture, or hamstring tightness, etc? We aren't constantly talking to the players - the clubs on field assets - and making sure they're able to perform at their best? We aren't constantly looking and analysing how to get a 1% edge over the competition? They're sports scientists and health professionals, not St Johns ambulance volunteers.
The comparison with other clubs, was to highlight that footy is complicated. It's not as simple as a strategy of pre-season training used to build a fitness base causing folks to break down. Remember, that was implemented because it's how the sport is played. Train like you play etc.
You've drawn a correlation between our conditioning strategy of repeat, burst sprinting and our injuries. Where is the detailed evidence to back that up? Do you think that we aren't monitoring our players closely enough, getting feedback when they feel sore etc? Do you think we ignore that feedback? Do you think that if we'd used a more endurance based approach our injuries would be better or worse? What's the evidence behind that?
I love to hear differing points of view. It's good to be challenged and made to think from another perspective. There's posters here I find almost always have differing points of view to my own, but they make good points and influence the wsy i think.
Challenge is good, it's fun. Be good if those challenges are based on facts, rather than assumptions or Google/AI searches though.
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