When thinking through methods to address its current injury crisis, CARLTON will take into account a number of distinct options. The team will also sharpen its focus on availability when making judgements on future list management.
The Blues are also assessing whether two-time Coleman Medal winner Charlie Curnow needs surgery on his problematic ankle as club officials get ready to evaluate their medical procedures after a season in which injuries devastated their prospects of winning the championship.
For a significant amount of the season, Carlton’s injury list comprised almost 40% of the team, forcing coach Michael Voss to choose 26-man squads from a pool of just 28 players on many occasions towards the end of the campaign.
Due to a string of injuries, the team’s well-known high-performance manager Andrew Russell had to resign in August. Rob Inness, the head of athletic performance at Sydney, was hired by Carlton this week to take over for Russell.
The Blues will subsequently review the multitude of reasons for the injury headaches that continue to plague ongoing seasons, with the club’s general manager of football Brad Lloyd telling AFL.com.au that rectifying the issues will be a priority over the summer.
“We’ll put in a fair bit of detail around the ‘why’ in regard to our durability,” Lloyd told AFL.com.au.
“We have had durability challenges over a number of years now, but that’s holistic as well. That comes across a number of areas; our list, our training process, there are collision injuries as well that are hard to avoid. We’ll look at it and try to make sure we keep improving.
“We do need to sort that out, we can’t have season on season where we’re not having full squads available. We need to have as many players play every game in the season as possible.
“We’ll look at it pretty closely and make any adjustments we can. Obviously, Rob is a major appointment for the club. He’s coming in with strong backgrounds from Richmond and Sydney, so we look forward to working with him as well once Sydney’s season is completed.”
The review into Carlton’s injury issues will include list management decisions, as the club prepares for exit interviews from Wednesday to Friday this week ahead of another important off-season at Ikon Park.
“The first thing I’d say is availability,” Lloyd said of the club’s list management priorities.
“That’s something we will keep looking at through our list management. That’s holistic in our program as well, we want to make sure as a club we have better availability.”
A number of key Carlton players – including Adam Cerra, Sam Docherty, Jack Martin, Caleb Marchbank, David Cuningham, Jesse Motlop, Matt Cottrell, Lachie Fogarty, Mitch McGovern, Adam Saad, Zac Williams and Jordan Boyd – missed four or more games this season due to recurring injury setbacks.
Cerra suffered multiple hamstring problems throughout the year, which resulted in three games where he was forced to be substituted out of the contest amid a season where he played three or more consecutive matches only once.
But the Blues will look into a variety of ways to stop recurring injury issues from repeating in the future and haven’t ruled out sending players overseas this summer to further investigate their respective issues.
“The medical team and the high-performance team, they’re always looking at everything. There can be a number of different reasons,” Lloyd said.
“Some of these injuries can end up quite complex as well. The ones that are straightforward or you’ve got a clear solution on them, we can do internally. But then there are others where, if the best people or the best advice is around the world, we definitely will look at it. We have been doing that and we’ll continue to do it with the players across the board.”
Despite Carlton’s myriad injury issues, the Blues will avoid a summer chocked full of off-season surgeries with Curnow (ankle) and Corey Durdin (shoulder) among the only players the club is considering sending for post-season procedures.
Although Matt Cottrell (shoulder) and Lachie Fogarty (collarbone) are already recovering from previous surgeries, the Blues are optimistic that they won’t have to put a lot more players through surgery in the upcoming weeks.
Curnow did, however, miss the team’s final two away games and the club’s loss to Brisbane in the elimination final due to an ankle ailment. The team is currently assessing whether Curnow may require surgery.
“We’re just working through that at the moment,” Lloyd added.
This week, we’ll have all of our exit medicals, after which we’ll discuss the results. There won’t be many operations performed. It’ll be on the lower end of the operations because we’ve already had a few done. However, in the next days, we’ll learn more.”
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