Why May should thank Hocking if he plays in the grand final

If, in a fortnight’s time, Steven May is a Melbourne premiership player, he will have plenty of people to thank.

He’ll be grateful to the club doctors and physio, to Demons coach Simon Goodwin and his support staff and, not least, to his teammates, for supporting him in a successful attempt to play after some kind of mild hamstring injury.

Steven May hurt his hamstring in Melbourne’s win over Geelong, which earned them a place in the grand final.Credit: Getty Images

But there are two others, outside the Melbourne Football Club, whom May ought to be giving a small measure of thanks and praise, if not quite lighting a candle to them.

First is the West Australian Premier Mark McGowan, whose hardline policies on quarantine in the COVID-free state have created the week’s break between preliminary and grand final.

Second is the AFL’s erstwhile head of football operations Steve Hocking, who is headed back to Geelong to replace Brian Cook as chief executive.

Steven May during Friday’s game.Credit: AFL Photos

Hocking’s contentious pre-season decision to create the medical sub is favourable to May as the Demons prepare for their first grand final since Neale Daniher’s far less talented team was obliterated by the Bombers in 2000.

On Saturday, May expressed confidence that he would be right for the grand final. “I won’t be missing out on that,” he said to the club website, in what was carefully controlled content.

We don’t know much about the specifics of the injury, except that a) May grabbed at the hamstring after a shove in the back from Tom Hawkins, and b) that Goodwin said the Demons believe that it was probably a back-related hamstring and that, as such, they thought May should be OK to play.

But the major reason for believing that May will play is that, as many current and ex-club football people will tell you, there are different approaches to playing injured players in grand finals, and it hinges largely on the worth of the player.

In short, the guns almost always play.

“You don’t play your bad ones,” said one former club official who’s seen hampered champions put out on the field for that one day in September. “You play the good ones.”

Some of the guns who were afflicted by injury performed well – Steve Johnson in 2011 (knee), Adam Goodes in 2012 (posterior cruciate ligament) and Nigel Lappin (2003, punctured lung!) are notable examples of rolling the dice successfully. But there’s a fair number who were too constrained to fire: Phil Davis (knee) in 2019 (his pre-game warm-up did not inspire confidence), Jonathan Brown (knee) in 2004 and James Hird (groin) in 2001.

Geelong’s Steve Johnson in the 2011 grand final.Credit: Wayne Taylor

May is not a champion like Hird or Brown, but he is structurally important and also a valuable director of teammates from defence.

This column claims no expertise in hamstrings, whether they are small strains or the back-related hammy that Goodwin suggested as probable for May. But medicos with experience in such matters say that it is easier for a footballer to carry a joint injury than a muscle that is damaged or torn.

That May has a history of hamstrings arguably makes him a riskier proposition, assuming there is some damage. But, as one medico with an understanding of hamstrings explained, there’s no question that he’d play if the MRI is clear, even if there’s pain.

The risks of playing May, however, have been mitigated by the medical sub rule that Hocking introduced, at the last minute, a matter of days before the season.

Grand finals are different, obviously, because there’s no next week. Yet, the risks of playing a player with even a slight muscle injury – and, again, we don’t know the full prognosis – are still well-documented (Peter Moore in 1981 is a celebrated case, he did his hammy two weeks before the grand final and struggled badly).

May, as one medico explained, poses less of a risk to the Demons in 2021 than a player in a similar boat would in any previous season, simply because the Hocking rule – originally conceived as a concussion substitute – means that if he goes down with a hamstring, the Demons will still have 22 players, with versatile James Jordon the probable sub (Jordon’s been sub for two months and would be dead stiff to lose that gig now).

The WA government’s tough quarantine rules have already assisted May as ably as Jake Lever. The AFL opted to put the bye after the preliminary final as its own risk mitigation, in the event of border issues, fairness if applicable and also to give it more time to prepare for a Perth denouement.

The Hocking sub rule provides another layer of insurance, in a competition in which teams ruthlessly play the percentages.

All things considered, the risks of going without their premier defender may well exceed that of putting him out there.

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