CARLTON will consider multiple unique options as it contemplates ways to solve its ongoing injury crisis, with the club also set to hone its focus on availability in future list management decisions.
As club officials prepare to review their medical processes following a season where injury ravaged their premiership hopes, the Blues are also determining whether dual Coleman Medal winner Charlie Curnow requires surgery on his troublesome ankle.
Carlton's injury list hovered at around 40 percent of its entire squad for large portions of the season, with coach Michael Voss forced to pick 26-man squads from just 28 available players multiple times late in the year.
The injury nightmare saw the club's renowned high-performance boss Andrew Russell retire in August, with Carlton announcing the hiring of Sydney's head of athletic performance Rob Inness as his replacement last week.
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.
Matt Cottrell (shoulder) and Lachie Fogarty (collarbone) are already rehabbing prior operations, though the Blues are confident they will avoid a host of players being forced into surgery in the coming weeks.
However, Curnow missed the side's final two home-and-away games, as well as the club's elimination final defeat to Brisbane, after tweaking his ankle, with the club in the process of determining whether he will need to be operated on.
"We're just working through that at the moment," Lloyd said.
"We'll have all of our exit medicals this week, then we'll work through it. We won't have a lot of surgeries. We've had a couple that have been done already, so it'll be on the low end for the surgeries. But we'll get some clarity in the next couple of days."
