Mick Malthouse can sympathise with players robbed of success by season-ending injuries

IN late 1982 MICK MALTHOUSE dislocated his shoulder and missed the Grand Final. The AFL great knows the mental anguish being felt by Lynden Dunn and Reece Conca who must now watch from the sidelines as their clubs chase premiership glory.

AFL Round 14. 24/06//2018. Collingwood v Carlton at the MCG. Collingwood's Lynden Dunn . Pic: Michael Klein

IN 1982 I played every game of the season for Richmond until I dislocated my shoulder in the second semi-final and missed the Grand Final.

The word harrowing best describes the emotion when you are forced to sit on the sidelines while your teammates spill their blood for victory in a final.

It is nothing short of torment.

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I have arthritis in that shoulder now, but the pain of missing that Grand Final runs deeper and still sits in my chest, alongside other Grand Final losses and life regrets.

It’s never fun to re-open old wounds, but right now I feel for a young man who has just had his season snatched from him. A season in which his club is headed for finals and perhaps a campaign deep into September.

At 31, Lynden Dunn has played 196 games. He hasn’t played a final at either of the two AFL clubs he’s belonged to and after rupturing his ACL last weekend he won’t play again this year.

Mick Malthouse in action for Richmond in 1982.

Lynden Dunn will miss the rest of the season with a knee injury. Picture: Michael Klein

Today he can only think of the immediate, about the rotten luck of an injury and the surgery and physio required to heal it but as the weeks roll on and Collingwood makes a beeline for a top-two finish, the realisation that he’ll be a passenger on that journey will hit him like a truck.

He has perhaps sat in the stands before in September and imagined what it’s like to play a final.

Imagined the adrenaline rush of running on to the ground and hearing the cacophony of a big crowd. Imagined the increase in intensity in the one-on-one contests. And imagined singing the club song, victorious and already turning attentions to the next final.

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Now he’ll be part of the crowd. Part of the support crew on the outer circle of the team huddle.

No matter how much the team tells him he helped get them this far, he’ll know he wasn’t one of the players toiling for a win on that day.

It’s the mental anguish that tears you apart. Most players can put up with the physical pain, but the isolation of injury, especially at the pointy end of the season, darkens your mind.

Bob Murphy walks away as Bulldogs celebrate the 2016 premiership.

Bob Murphy admits that as great a day as it was when the Bulldogs won the 2016 premiership, his absence from the field will ache in his heart forever.

He played on the following year, but as the Dogs’ season deteriorated, so too did the captain’s enthusiasm wane, as he was further denied the chance to win his own medal.

It’s a harsh reality for players and coaches.

Best laid plans come unstuck in sport with untimely injuries, a drop in form, or plain bad luck.

I feel for the players who put so much in, to have it all taken away in a single moment through injury.

Coaches plan during pre-season around what the year may look like. Then as the weeks progress you reprogram the side to work to the strengths of your team against the strengths of your opponents.

As soon as you get a sniff of finals, you start to cement positions in your mind and a plan to beat the best.

When “Plan A” goes awry through injury, it’s so disruptive to move to “Plan B” let alone “Plan C”, but that’s sport.

Reece Conca is stretchered off after dislocating his ankle.

As coach, you always offer positive encouragement to an injured player, but if his year is over, you shift his focus to rehabilitation.

There are 39 players in the league listed as “season over”. Seventeen of them are from clubs sitting in the top eight and eyeing off finals. That’s a lot of disruption and heartache.

Reece Conca has played three finals in his 100 games for Richmond, but he missed the most important one - the winning Grand Final.

When he dislocated his ankle last weekend and lay in agony on the ground, I bet the pain of the injury wasn’t the only pain he felt in that moment.

And I think his teammates felt it too, as they all gathered around him on the stretcher ... “not again”. It’s traumatic really, for an athlete who has given his all to be at his best and play at the top. It’s not fair.

He might come back, and I hope he does, but there’s a lot of work to be done between now and then.

Callum Mills, at only 21, is the fabric of Sydney. The Swans are fighting for a top-four finish, but felled with a foot injury he can only think, “what could have been”.

Hamish Hartlett, who would be a permanent part of a Port Adelaide team which is gaining momentum, is left to ponder what should have been after suffering a season-ending knee injury.

Adam Treloar is attended to by trainers after injuring his hamstrings.

Adam Treloar, in his third season with the Magpies, requires a length of time to recover from a serious hamstring injury. There are seven weeks after today until finals. Time isn’t his friend.

And you don’t get the year back. You won’t get to the end of your career and have a season in lieu for missing time with an injury. Once it’s over, it’s over. Gone.

Perhaps for someone like Esava Ratugolea it won’t necessarily feel like a tragedy if he misses Geelong’s run at September because this is only his first season in the AFL.

It will sting the poor kid, but possibly like many young players he won’t know the true significance of missing finals because he’ll expect to have that chance again. And maybe with the Cats he will. But maybe he won’t, because it doesn’t always pan out the way you want. It’s hard to make finals, even harder to win them.

That’s why the likes of Tom Scully and Toby Greene would be getting anxious about a return from injury.

Greater Western Sydney has fought its way out of a form slump to jump back into the top eight. After the disappointment of the past two seasons, eliminated in preliminary finals, the maturity of the group should match the drive, which makes anything possible.

Scully and Greene would be desperate to be part of it. They’ll need games under their belt to find form, but if there’s another chance at a Grand Final berth this year, you can bet they’ll move heaven and earth to be in the team. Any footballer would.

Life is full of opportunities and it’s what you make of them that counts.

Sometimes though, those opportunities are forcibly removed from your grasp and you can’t do anything but create a new path to walk on.

Unfortunately for the Giants, that’s what confronts Jon Patton after his knee buckled this week.

Lynden Dunn might be feeling all sorts of pain right now, and it won’t disappear in a hurry, but from this he’ll also gain strength and resilience. And it’s these character traits that make the best footballers in September.

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