NORTH Melbourne could not have handled its spate of lingering injuries this season any better, with the vagaries of AFL football chiefly to blame for their bad run, according to Roos football director Geoff Walsh.
North had been the envy of the rest of the competition in recent seasons for the short injury lists it enjoyed under club doctor Andy McMahon and high-performance director Steve Saunders, with soft-tissue injuries, in particular, almost non-existent.
But this year has not been so kind to the Roos on the injury front.
Most frustratingly, they have had a series of players with long-term injuries that have lingered longer than initially expected.
Pre-season injuries to Robbie Tarrant (tibia stress reaction) and Cameron Delaney (toe) kept them from playing at any level until a fortnight and a week ago respectively.
Taylor Garner has yet to return from a hamstring tendon injury he suffered in North's NAB Cup game against Hawthorn in late February.
Jamie Macmillan was expected to miss between four to six weeks when he broke his right fibula in round three against Port Adelaide, but is now not expected back until round 15 at the earliest.
And star midfielder Daniel Wells and key defender Nathan Grima have been sidelined since round five and seven respectively with foot injuries.
Walsh told AFL.com.au the Roos had been frustrated by this run of injuries, but he did not think the club could have done any more to get these players back onto the field sooner.
"I think our (rehabilitation) processes have always been something that we've, one, had confidence in and, two, have withstood scrutiny," Walsh said.
"I don't know if there's any rhyme or reason to a club's cycle of injuries over a period of time.
"We certainly haven't come across anything that we've said, 'Oh, we could have done that better or could have done this better.'
"It's one of the inexplicable wonders or mysteries of AFL footy I suppose, in terms of why clubs get injuries and how many you get and to which sort of players."
Addressing some of this year's injuries individually, Walsh said:
- Macmillan's broken fibula had simply taken longer to heal than first anticipated.
- The club knew Garner's injury was "going to be a significant hamstring at the time because it was a decent nick".
- Delaney's injury was to the same toe that had sidelined him for the final five rounds of 2013.
- Grima, listed as a chance to play subject to a fitness test for the past month, would continue to be managed conservatively given his injury-prone history: "We don't want to send him in with any doubt and ruin his season totally."
Wells' foot injury was initially thought to involve nothing more than bone bruising, but when it failed to improve after a month he underwent a weight-bearing X-ray in May that revealed he had a Lisfranc injury (when one or more of the metatarsal bones are displaced from the tarsus).
Walsh said weight-bearing X-rays were not typically used to assess an injury initially, with traditional scans normally a sufficient diagnostic aid.
"Normally you wouldn't have to do a weight-bearing X-ray," Walsh said.
"It's only when the injury does not respond normally that you check to see whether under weight-bearing stress the ligament does react differently.
"In Wellsy's case, it did and from that point we knew what we were dealing with."
