Analysis: Ollie Wines’ shoulder injury one Port Adelaide must simply accept and move on

Had a Port player injured themselves on the pitch in the Tuesday night cricket team Power players started this season, the club would have to wear it. And the same must go for Ollie Wines, whose waterskiing injury was bad luck not bad behaviour.

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We don’t know whether Port Adelaide players wanted to keep quiet the fact they’d started a Tuesday-night cricket team this summer, but when coach Ken Hinkley found out, he was quietly chuffed.

Despite the risk of injury even just playing T20 once a week — of breaking a finger, tweaking a calf, or worse, wrecking a knee — Hinkley was happy for them to do it outside their 9-5 job as professional footballers because it meant they wanted to spend time together.

“That excites me that they are together in a social setting,” Hinkley told The Advertiser last month.

“It’s important they do that away from footy as well; I love that.”

Ollie Wines is a front-runner for the Port Adelaide captaincy along with Tom Jonas. Picture: Sam Wundke (AAP).

But with the good also comes the bad.

Had Travis Boak or Ollie Wines — who have both played in Port’s players/coaches cricket team this season — hurt themselves on the pitch then the Power would have to wear it.

The same now goes for Wines, who hurt his shoulder waterskiing near Mannum on the weekend. The midfielder will have scans on Tuesday to determine whether it means he misses some of the season.

It’s an unfortunate mishap but the outrage about Wines waterskiing — regardless of whether it’s January or July — is misguided. It always is in hindsight.

Where was the outrage when Wines was waterskiing last month?

And if we’re filthy on Wines going skiing then Tuesday-night cricket should stop, Boak probably shouldn’t go surfing and what is Charlie Dixon doing on a Harley-Davidson motorbike?

Granted, the risk of injury while skiing is higher than cricket and surfing, and Port players are all well paid to play football, not face a cricket ball or catch waves.

We shouldn’t lose perspective of Wines’s behaviour either. He wasn’t out drinking until 3am and breaking his hand in three places in a bar brawl.

He went skiing, in summer, as he’d done thousands of times before, something which everyone knew about.

Yet suddenly his injury is seen as some reckless, irresponsible act more so than just bad luck that, yes, he could have minimised, but where do you draw the line?

The river is where Wines grew up and skiing is what he does. When he’s not in Power colours, he’s in an Echuca Southern 80 T-shirt and a day on the skis can be as good as a decent weights sessions anyway. The real shame is for Wines, who as a player was flying. He looked lean, fit and was leading his running group when the Power was punished in the heat in Noosa lat month.

Wines taking part in Port’s beach wrestling during their pre-season camp in Noosa. Picture: Sarah Reed.

He could be fine and a positive is that he ran at training on Monday with his shoulders unstrapped. Or he could be staring at four months on the sidelines. There is a big difference between running, and tackling or pushing weights, which Wines knows well, having had a shoulder “reco” in 2015. Scans are likely to lead to one of three scenarios:

THAT he has hurt his AC joint and could train through it and be right for the JLT series. Kane Cornes did his AC joint in 2009 and played the next week.

THAT he dislocated his shoulder and will attempt to play on now it’s popped back in but risk a recurrence of the injury, as did Jason Porplyzia, who would even dislocate his shoulder on the couch at home.

OR that the dislocated shoulder needs to be surgically reconstructed, which would typically mean a three-to-four-month recovery period.

In an ideal world, Wines doesn’t go skiing and doesn’t hurt his shoulder and this is never an issue.

But footballers — again, yes, very well paid — as we constantly hear, are human beings too. They do normal things such as surfing and skiing and play cricket and ride motorbikes. Perhaps that’s what they need to keep their heads fresh when their bodies are being smashed.

Wines hasn’t let the club down and he hasn’t failed his teammates.

He has, at worst, undone a lot of hard work that he’s put in over summer and if he’s out then someone else must now step up.

Because sometimes accidents just happen.