Both Thompson and Ling himself thought the Cats’ deputy vice-captain may have broken his left arm after it was tangled between two players after the first bounce.
But after receiving medical attention and icing the joint, the star midfielder returned to the field of battle just 15 minutes later and was instrumental in the Cats’ 43-point win.
“I just got it trapped in between two players, I think it was (Cameron) Mooney and one of their blokes,” Ling said afterwards.
“I hyper-extended it a little bit. Benny Graham did one six or seven years ago and I thought I’d done the same thing… geez it hurt, but it settled down a bit once I got back to the rooms.
“We iced it up for a little bit and then I thought, ‘Stuff it. Get back out there and stop being a sook.’
“So I got back out there and it hurt a little bit, but it was fine once I got going again.
After being earmarked for the job on Adelaide skipper Mark Ricciuto, Ling was swung onto Crows’ danger-man Brett Burton, who had gathered 10 possessions in the first term.
While Burton still finished as his team’s best with 32 touches, Ling hurt his opponent defensively, amassing 26 possessions of his own and booting three goals to claim best- afield honours.
Ling will undergo tests on his sore elbow on Monday, but is confident of being fit to take on Hawthorn in the Mothers’ Day clash next Sunday at Telstra Dome.
“I’ve got to ice it up and probably get it x-rayed tomorrow. They are confident that there’s no bone damage, that it’s just a bit of sprained ligaments.”
Despite experiencing discomfort in the heavily-strapped joint, the midfielder said that once he opted to return to the field, there was no excuse not to contribute strongly.
“If I’m going to decide to come back on the ground, I can’t run round and say, ‘Well, I’ve got a sore elbow, it doesn’t matter if I play well’. If I decide to get back out there, then I’ve got to contribute,” he said.
“If I’d have thought that it was too sore and going to affect the way that I played I would have just stayed off the ground, but I thought I could get out there and make an impact.”
The Cats, who have suffered a narrow loss to Sydney, thrashed Richmond and gone down after a spirited performance against Fremantle at Subiaco Oval over the previous three rounds, now move to a 2-4 win-loss record, with a chance to build on that against the hapless Hawks next Sunday.
“We needed that win,” Ling said.
“2-4 sounds a lot better than 1-5, but still we need a few more yet. We’ve got to keep working. We’ve played well over the last month, but we’ve still only got two wins out of it. We’ve got to make sure that we keep doing what we’ve been doing well and get some wins on the board.”
