NRL grand final 2018: Why Cooper Cronk will be a passenger

Even if God and science allow Cooper Cronk to start the NRL grand final, there’s no guarantee he will finish it.

If Cooper Cronk plays in the grand final, he could be the first in the showers

Cooper Cronk says updates on his shoulder injury will be delivered on a need-to-know basis. Well, he needs to know this. Even if his nominated adjudicators, God and science, allow him to start Sunday night’s NRL grand final, there’s no guarantee he will finish it. To get on the field will be one thing. To stay on it, another.

Cronk’s damaged rotator cuff will worsen with every hit. He’s likely to become a passenger or the first bloke in the showers, both scenarios being ruinous for the Sydney Roosters.

As he says himself, if he uses his good arm to put his hand up to play, there’s going to be nowhere to hide. Justifiably ruthless Melbourne Storm forwards are going to be lining up to work him over.

Dr Justin Keogh, an associate professor of exercise and sports science at Bond University, tells The Australian: “The shoulder is one of the worst, if not the worst, joints in terms of mobility strength. Because you move it through such a large range of motion, it’s really difficult to supply lots of support (strapping) because you then have to limit range.

“That mechanical support is somewhat minimal to what it can provide the athlete. The demands of rugby league in terms of tackling, passing, running, it is very likely it will be aggravated multiple times throughout the game. Each contact will make it worse and could cause more damage. You need to be able to lift your arm and that is seriously in question with Cooper Cronk.”

Hawthorn is rueing the decision to play the injured and largely ineffective Dustin Martin in last week’s season-ending AFL loss to Collingwood. A severely corked leg, from his thigh to his knee, would have ruled Martin out of a regular-season game. He played on reputation and the club’s belief an unfit Martin was better than a fully fit replacement. It backfired.

The Roosters face the same ruinous scenario if they roll the dice and wheel Cronk out.

Asked about the effectiveness of strapping Cronk’s shoulder, Keogh says: “There are ways you can strap it but the support will be questionable, just by nature of the range of movement the shoulder needs to operate. As the game progresses and you start sweating, the elasticity of that tape and the support it provides reduces. It doesn’t hold that position effectively throughout 80 minutes.

Cronk struggled with the injury late in the Roosters’ preliminary final win over the Rabbitohs. Picture: AAP

“In a normal tackling position, especially for someone the size of Cronk, the arm is elevated above the shoulder. It’s difficult to provide support without limiting range, especially in that position. It’s going to be very awkward in terms of pain and discomfort.”

Cronk says he will work overtime to be ready. If the Roosters physiotherapist wants him to do five sessions, he will do 10. Keogh says this is problematic in itself. A fitness test will not be possible without the threat of making the injury worse.

“Any time a structure gets injured, the body part that is injured will lock up,” he says. “For him to regain that movement, those tissues need to regenerate in a week. For that to happen, you need to apply some mechanical stress on those tissues to realign, but they also need time to rest and recover.

“If the physio recommends doing something five times a day, you can potentially do more damage to the tissues if you do more than the recommendation because they won’t have time to recover.

“This happens a lot around grand finals and Olympic finals. There’s no recipe to follow. The medical team are making educated guesses because the body isn’t meant to recover that quickly. They won’t be able to test Cooper before the grand final at risk of doing more damage or another injury.”

In normal circumstances, Cronk would completely rest for a week before starting rehabilitation. He’s attempting to cram the rest and the rehab into one week. It’s guesswork that Keogh hopes will be documented for the benefit of the sports medical community.

“He will be doing a lot of manual therapy, stretching and resistance work to help those muscle fibres realign,” Keogh says.

“The challenge is how much massage, stretching and resistance training you can give someone while giving them time to recover. If you do too much, you’ll actually be worse off than you were before. You can do more damage if you’re not careful.

“Often an athlete might forego some sleep to get extra sessions in. But obviously sleep is a great part of the recovery process, so it’s a bit unknown if that is a positive thing to do.

“These injuries are quite unique. They’ll be making clinical decisions on the fly based on the feedback he’s giving them. The program to get him to recover will be very minute and could change every hour. If they were to write up a paper on what they did this week to try to aid Cooper, it would be really interesting for the sport medicine community. It will be of major interest at a sport medical conference and to a lot of health professionals.”