It is not the first time we’ve gone into games missing star players, in fact, as all good Eagles fans would know we’ve played almost all year with out Michael Gardiner, who in my opinion, is the most influential player on our list.
Injuries are the bane of a footballer’s existence, but are very much a reality in what is one of the quickest contact sports in the world.
I doubt very much that people outside the football industry would realise the amount of work which injured players have to do to get themselves back into match condition.
Even more so I doubt many people would appreciate the mental drain which injuries can cause. Take someone like Brett Jones for
instance, who has recently injured his ankle.
He’d be in at the club every morning at 8am, well before the fit players are there, he’d be sticking his entire foot in a bucket of ice water for a minute, then taking it out and sticking it in a bucket of hot water for two minutes, and continuing this process for twenty minutes.
This is to reduce the swelling in his ankle and although it might sound like child’s play, before your ankle goes numb, that minute in the ice bucket feels like an eternity on a bony ankle. After the
hot and cold routine (Travis Gaspar holds the record for most hot and colds in a day, I forget the number but I think it was over ten, twenty minute sessions) Jonesy would then head into the physio room for ultra sound, electrotherapy, and various other treatments of dubious effectiveness.
Please note that I am a footballer and have never even seen a
physiotherapy textbook and as such my professional opinions on injury management should carry about as much weight as my opinion on the government’s new Medicare policy.
Following these hi tech treatments, Jonesy will then have massage therapy on his ankle (in my professional opinion massage therapy is a very useful tool in the fight against injuries) and will then head up to Kitchener Park for his walk and jog with our head trainer Bill Sutherland.
This is a process that will be repeated in the afternoon, and the day will be broken up between these two sessions with pool work, or other relevant exercises depending on the type of injury the player is carrying.
Not all injured players will have the same process to go through as Jonesy, but most will have a similar structure to their days. To me I never see the physical aspect of rehabilitation, eg: the jogging, swimming, boxing, etc, as a problem.
To me the worst thing about an injured player’s week is the
monotonous repetition of boring activities, and the fact that you are physically at the club for so many hours in the day.
The other problem that arises when you are injured is that you feel like you’re constantly explaining your injury situation with people. It is human nature to ask someone you know about their injury and players are aware of that. They’re also aware that the person asking about your injury status is almost always doing so because they care about your injury and wish you well.
This however doesn’t solve the problem of having to repeat the same story, hundreds of times during the week to the different people you come along in your travels.
The final thing that often creeps into injured players’ heads is the self doubt. Even if the injury is not a major one players will often worry about a recurrence and the possible long term effects recurring injuries can have on players’ careers.
All of these things cause injured footballers to be grumpy footballers, and probably not the best people to live with or to see socially.
The upside of all this is that very few injuries are permanent, especially with the current day sports sciences which are making advancements every day. You can tell a lot about a player by the way he responds to being injured, and sometimes I think players are mentally stronger and certainly more appreciative of playing football after coming back from injuries.
Certainly I hope that all our injured guys make speedy and full recoveries and I also hope that I’m never looking for a sales job in the company that makes ultrasound and electrotherapy machines because I could be in some trouble.
