AFL 2024: Carlton lost the second-most games to injury across the competition in the past five years

Carlton’s injury troubles in 2024 have been well documented – but new data shows just how far back the club’s woes extend. A review is underway, as is a new multimillion-dollar project.

Carlton will pour as much as $5 million into an allied health and medical imaging centre to be ready next year, which will help its injury management and provide an alternate revenue stream.

The Blues and their commercial business partner will each provide half of the initial costs for the new venture, set to run at between $8m-$10m as the club also undergoes a review into its injury prevention.

New statistics show that Carlton lost the second-most games to injury across the competition in the past five years, second only to West Coast.

Since 2020, the Blues have lost 1019 games to injury from across their list – more than 400 more than 18th-ranked Gold Coast (613). They have also lost the second-most games for best-22 players (662).

The Blues have secured Sydney’s fitness boss Rob Inness as the new head of high performance, with the Swans losing only 670 games to injury since 2020 – the seventh-best rating in the league. The Swans have lost only 367 games to best-22 players in the past five seasons, which is ranked third best in the AFL.

The Blues will forensically drill into every possible explanation for the high injury rate across its training and fitness programs.

Carlton has had players like Mitch McGovern who were injury prone when they arrived at the club, but of more concern is that emerging stars like Adam Cerra have turned into repeat offenders since joining the Blues. The ex-Fremantle midfielder has had five hamstring issues in the past 12 months, sometimes returning after only a week out before a recurrence.

Carlton’s new specialist health facility will be available to all AFL and AFLW players as well as staff, which will allow the club easy access to the full range of scans to diagnose injuries.

It will also provide a major revenue stream for the Blues as they diversify their income.

While the Blues will hope to prevent major soft tissue injuries the scanning of minor concerns and expert diagnosis of them can often lead to reducing the overall injury toll.

Carlton made a $1.5 million profit last year and continues to improve its overall financial picture, with the Carlton Foundation helping raise money for the medical facility and the continued restoration of the Gardiner Stand.

Charlie Curnow has been booked in for post-season ankle surgery. Picture: Michael Klein

The Carlton foundation lists as one of its goals a total restoration of the stand, which would house the official club archives storage.

Blues football boss Brad Lloyd said after the club’s finals loss to Brisbane the club needed to dig deep to solve its injury concerns.

“We have had durability challenges over a number of years now, but that’s holistic as well,” he said.

“That comes across a number of areas; our list, our training process, there are collision injuries as well that are hard to avoid. “We’ll look at it and try to make sure we keep improving. We do need to sort that out, we can’t have season on season where we’re not having full squads available. We need to have as many players play every game in the season as possible.”

Injury-prone players including Jack Martin, Caleb Marchbank and David Cuningham were delisted by the Blues in recent days, with Charlie Curnow booked in for syndesmosis surgery.

Originally published as AFL 2024: Carlton lost the second-most games to injury across the competition in the past five years