Country pre-season games

[injuryupdate]

None seems to vote on polls on this site, so they are a bit of a waste of time, but I thought I would ask this question anyway, as it is somewhat amusing.

The background is Hawthorn and Kangaroos complaining about the state of the surface in Morwell at a practice match, which has other clubs sending teams out to investigate the state of grounds prior to their scheduled matches.

[injuryupdate]

Hawthorn will be missing two players for six weeks after Steven Greene and Kris Barlow both suffered posterior cruciate ligament injuries in a country practice game in Morwell. The Hawks believe that country grounds aren't paying as much attention to softening the playing surface as AFL grounds. Read more at AFL.com and real footy. They have a good point that all matches in which professional players are risked need to be prepared to professional standards, although it is stretching the point to blame the surface for these specific injuries. A subsequent AFL practice match in Bendigo was cancelled due to hardness of the cricket pitch, whilst NRL coach Stuart Raper believes that clubs should play one pre-season trial match "at the most" due to risks of injury. Port Power's Josh Francou re-injured his knee anterior cruciate ligament (see picture) graft at training in late January. He has had a revision ACL reconstruction and is now out for the entire 2004 AFL season. This scenario is a terrible sense of deja vu for the Power, who lost Michael Wilson for the best part of two seasons when he also re-injured his graft at training in January. Because Francou was injured very early in 2004 there is no question that should have waited longer to progress to full training (he would have been 10 months post-surgery at the time of re-injury), read more about this dilemma. He would have been at risk both from the viewpoint of having had previous surgery and training on an early-season surface (read a .pdf scientific paper about the risks). Read more at Foxsports and AFL.com. Matt Burgan at AFL.com is worried about Port's chances this year in light of the injury. St Kilda's Craig Callaghan is also facing a year on the sidelines after a second knee reconstruction, although in his case it was his 'good' knee that was injured. Brisbane star Jonathon Brown has a lateral meniscal tear and will miss the first few weeks of the season after a knee arthroscopy. Geelong have lost Steven King for the first half of the season after Achilles surgery.