INJURED Greater Western Sydney pair Brent Daniels and Conor Stone have spent part of the off-season at the University of Wisconsin in the United States as they look to put a frustrating 2022 campaign behind them.
Daniels didn't play this year due to persistent hamstring issues in a season where the Giants recorded their worst record since 2014, leading to the departure of Leon Cameron after round nine.
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Stone was restricted to only one AFL appearance and three VFL games due to his own hamstring problems, which started during the AAMI Community Series and plagued the former first-round pick across 2022.
AFL.com.au understands that Daniels, Stone and the Giants' head of medical James Rahme – who arrived at the club 12 months ago after a decade working as the head physiotherapist at the Manly Sea Eagles and Canterbury Bulldogs – spent time at the School of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Wisconsin in September.
Greater Western Sydney sent the trio to the United States on a fact-finding mission to help build a program over the pre-season that will help put Daniels and Stone's hamstring woes behind them in 2023 and beyond.
The National Football League awarded the University of Wisconsin a US$4 million grant in 2021 to study the prevention and treatment of hamstring injuries in elite football players.
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The purpose of the project is to reduce the number of hamstring injuries in the NFL and identify targets for injury mitigation. Much like the AFL, hamstring injuries are prevalent in the NFL where re-injury is also common.
It is understood that Daniels and Stone underwent quantitative imaging, on-field biomechanics testing and analytics to build specific programs to follow across the summer months in western Sydney.
Greater Western Sydney’s high-performance department has also worked closely with leading hamstring expert Dr David Opar, who is the director of Australian Catholic University’s Sports Performance, Recovery, Injury and New Technologies Research Centre and the only Australian working with the NFL's taskforce on soft tissue injuries.
Both Daniels and Stone will build up their training loads ahead of Christmas and are expected to be in full training by January, with the aim to be available for selection by round one.
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New Greater Western Sydney coach Adam Kingsley will get to work with the club’s first-to-fourth-year players next week, along with a new coaching panel at Giants HQ.
Giants head of football Jason McCartney has also signed Ben Hart, Brett Montgomery and Jeremy Laidler as assistant coaches since the end of the season, along with former Western Jets coach Robbie Chancellor as head of development.
