Lance Franklin could miss half the season with serious hamstring injury, Buddy’s former fitness boss says he should lose weight to prolong career
Fitness guru Andrew Russell worked with Lance Franklin extensively during his time at Hawthorn. And he has some stern advice for the ageing superstar to prolong his career.
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Andrew Russell, the conditioning guru who guided Buddy Franklin throughout the first half of his AFL career, has urged the Sydney superstar to shed some weight in an effort to prolong his AFL career.
A former Hawks fitness boss who is now Carlton’s director of high performance, Russell said he would reach out to Franklin in the coming weeks to see how he was dealing with his latest setback.
Franklin, 33, suffered a second serious hamstring injury in the space of 12 months this week and will miss at least the next 10 weeks of this shortened AFL season.
The star forward is only 56 goals away from becoming the sixth player in history to reach the 1000-goal milestone but this latest in a series of injuries has cast doubt on his future, despite being contracted until the end of 2022.
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“Clearly, he has got some challenges right now, but there are a lot of players in the game who have had challenges late in their careers and they can get it right,” Russell said on Fox Footy.
“My big thing if I was talking to Bud - and I will reach out to Bud - is that I would be trying to get him to drop weight.
“There might be a whole lot of other things he could do in his program. I don’t know what he is doing now, there are a lot of subtleties around his hip and pelvis.
“But his mobility program, flexibility program and trying to drop weight would be the things I would be focusing on.”
Franklin is listed as 105kg in the AFL 2020 season guide.
Russell said he would love to see Franklin follow the lead of some former teammates who were able to cut their weight back late in their careers to ward off injuries and extend their time in the game.
“The biggest thing that a lot of guys do that prolongs their career is actually getting lighter later in their career,” he said. “Shaun Burgoyne was (like) that, Hodgey (Luke Hodge) was (like) that, and Jordan Lewis got lighter and it prolonged his career.
“The reality is that it helps them. It is less load on their joints and it is less load on their soft-tissue structures and it helps these guys.”
Russell said Franklin’s work rate on the training track in his time at Hawthorn allowed him to deal with ongoing back issues.
“Bud was always very stiff in his lumbar spine ... and young bodies get away with it,” Russell said. “He trained really hard, Bud, early in his career.”
“He loved the work and I am not sure how much training he has done in the last few years.
“He has just got to get back to consistent training number one before he can even think about playing footy (again).”
Russell said Franklin had become more professional in his approach to the game in recent years.
He said the goalkicking superstar was the most unique AFL athlete he had worked with.
“Athletically, he is unbelievably special in what he can do,” he said. “What I saw him do, I haven’t seen anyone else in the game come close to doing on the training track. He just trained better than everyone else.”
Clarkson: Buddy ‘a long way’ from retirement
Four-time premiership coach Alastair Clarkson insists Lance Franklin’s AFL career is far from over despite the former Hawthorn superstar this week suffering another serious injury.
The experienced Sydney forward could miss more than half the season after damaging his right hamstring during training on Wednesday.
Franklin, who turned 33 in January, sat out nine matches in 2019 due to ongoing issues with his left hamstring.
The four-time Coleman medallist is in the seventh season of a monster nine-year, $10 million deal which saw him leave Hawthorn for the Swans at the end of 2013. But his former coach at the Hawks is confident Franklin will bounce back from his latest setback.
“I wouldn’t write him off by any means,” Clarkson said.
“(Franklin’s) had the best part of 12 months now where it’s been tough for him but I know him very well as a person.
“He’s made fantastic contributions to both the Hawthorn and Sydney footy clubs. He’s a long way from finishing up.
“He’s been such a durable bugger for a long, long period of time at both of our clubs.
“He’ll be doing it tough at the minute but he’ll find a way and play some footy again.” Franklin, an eight-time All-Australian, will not be able to resume running for up to four weeks, with the Swans saying his latest injury is worse than the one he dealt with in 2019.
He needs 56 more goals to join Tony Lockett, Gordon Coventry, Jason Dunstall, Doug Wade and Gary Ablett senior by becoming the sixth player in VFL/AFL history to reach the magical 1000-goal mark.
-AAP
What does Franklin injury mean for Daniher deal?
Ben Horne
Sydney’s bombshell admission that Lance Franklin could miss more than half the season is a pain which threatens to linger for years to come.
The Swans believe Franklin’s right hamstring tear is worse than the injury that kept him out for nine rounds last year but ex-AFL greats and the superstar’s wife believe the 33-year-old’s biggest challenge from here on out will be mental.
The ball is firmly in Franklin’s court about whether he feels he can see out the final three years of his record contract. Not only because he’s an all-time great, but because the AFL indicated at the time he signed that Sydney would get no salary cap relief for the duration of the deal, even in the event he retires early.
Sydney are unsure how long Franklin will be sidelined but he won’t be back running for at least a month and in a shortened season, there is now enormous pressure on the baby Swans to stay afloat until he comes back.
But the ripple effect of Franklin’s latest devastating injury could continue into 2021 and beyond.
The fact Franklin will go a full calendar year having played only one solitary game of football could in turn cast doubt over the rationale behind Sydney’s pursuit of Essendon star Joe Daniher.
Daniher is injury-affected himself, having only played 11 games since 2017, and the Bombers unable to say with certainty if and when he would return this year.
If both struggle to get on the park this year it will ask serious questions about whether having two suspect bodies up forward is worth the risk – no matter how enormous the potential upside might be.
Former AFL great and Fox Footy expert Brad Johnson has no doubt Franklin will get a lucky break with his run of injuries, but the question is whether the goal-kicking phenomenon can mentally keep the fires burning when just playing one match is proving so taxing.
“Physically he’ll get right. He will turn the corner. Over the next six-12 months he’ll know that anyway,” said Johnson.
“If he gets himself right look out. Because he’s athletically unbelievable still. We all know that.
“But it’s probably mentally dealing with it. The ball is completely in his court in terms of how he’s feeling mentally and pushing through.
“Even at 34 or 35, you look at guys who have played to that age and at the end, it’s mentally (a challenge) more than anything else.”
Franklin’s wife Jesinta spoke to Channel 7 on Thursday and conceded that her husband’s biggest challenge would be getting his head around the latest setback. But new baby daughter Tallulah will help.
“That is their job (as an athlete), their body is their job. When they hurt themselves or they injure themselves, it’s actually mentally extremely challenging,” she said.
The AFL were so enraged about the Swans stealing Franklin from the grips of GWS back in 2013, that indications from head office at the time were that the Swans would be forced to carry Franklin’s salary in their cap through every year of the record deal, even if he was to retire early.
According to Fox Footy’s own Dermott Brereton, the Swans have won on Franklin overall, but now have little choice but to cross their fingers and hope for the best.
“I think the Sydney Swans when they got him they knew they had to pay overs to get him. I think they’ve had a return on their investment. Anything they get from now, if he does get back out there, is a bonus,” said Brereton.
“They’ve already been paid.
“Mentally it’ll rankle within him that he can’t get out there and show what he’s got … but father time doesn’t show any favours to anyone.”
There’s been speculation the AFL could slash its salary cap from $13 million to $11 million next season in response to the COVID-19 crisis, making Franklin’s fixed $1 million plus contract an even tighter squeeze to accommodate alongside a marquee recruit like Daniher.
Swans rocked by Buddy scan results
Lance Franklin is facing the prospect of missing more than half the season after scans confirmed the Sydney Swans superstar has suffered a serious hamstring tear.
Swans head of football Charlie Gardiner confirmed a “decent” injury that the club fears is worse than the hamstring injury that kept him out for nine weeks last season.
In a shortened 17-week season, in which one match has already been played, there are major concerns about what role Franklin might be able to play in the Swans campaign.
One positive was there was no tendon damage found by the scans, while the right hamstring in question is one where he hasn’t previously encountered any issues.
Gardiner said it was too early to say what Franklin’s recovery time might be, but he won’t run again for at least a month.
“It confirms it’s a pretty decent hamstring injury. It’s on his right side so he has no history of injury to that side. It’s a new injury. We can’t say right here and now how long he’ll be out but we know it’s a decent injury and he won’t run for the next three or four weeks,” Gardiner said.
“There’s no tendon damage in the hamstring, so that is a positive.
“We think it’s slightly worse than the injury he sustained last year mid-season and he missed about nine weeks. That might be an indication, but we just don’t know until he gets into his rehabilitation and we see how he progresses.”
Gardiner revealed Franklin had pulled up sore at a session last week and his loads were being managed.
But after running strongly at a session on Monday, the Swans were progressing with his program. And that’s when the injury took place at a running session on Wednesday.
The Swans are assessing their options as how best to treat Franklin.
“We’ll obviously be guided by the medical team and we’re also seeking advice for the best treatment and management of the injury,” he said.
Wife Jesinta told Channel 7 on Thursday morning that the goalkicking great was devastated and said she had concern over how the setback might affect him mentally.
“It’s absolutely devastating, he came home yesterday from training early and he was really upset by what had happened,” Franklin said.
“He’d spent the whole pre-season working so hard – even in lockdown he’d focused so much on staying fit and healthy which is really hard when you’re not training with your teammates and there’s no fixture in sight and no idea when you’re going back to play.
“We were talking about it (the injury) this morning and I really think having Tallulah (new daughter) at home will help him through this stage because for any athlete being injured is mentally the toughest thing that they can go through.
“I think that’s what everyone has to be really wary of too, I’ve seen really nasty comments online.”
Franklin is about to embark on his seventh season of a landmark nine-year contract at the Swans, with the star reportedly on more than $1 million a year.
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Originally published as Lance Franklin could miss half the season with serious hamstring injury, Buddy’s former fitness boss says he should lose weight to prolong career