By Sam McClure and Jake Niall
Essendon are investigating potential causes of their continuing high rate of soft-tissue injuries, as young star Zach Reid prepares to meet a surgeon following his latest setback.
Reid, who suffered a reoccurrence of a hamstring injury at training on Wednesday, just when the Bombers were hoping to bring him back, may require surgery which would almost certainly end his season.
Important Essendon key defender Zach Reid.Credit: AFL Photos
According to a club source who preferred to remain anonymous to speak freely, Essendon are highly conscious of the importance of rectifying any issues with managing injuries as they seek to recruit stars from other clubs, including Harley Reid and Zak Butters, both of whom are out of contract at the end of next year.
One potential trade target, Miles Bergman, re-signed with Port Adelaide this week.
The Bombers believe it’s unlikely that the surface at their Tullamarine training base – “the Hangar” – is a source of their injury plague.
Another consideration is whether the Dons, as with other clubs in the past, have a collection of players prone to soft-tissue injuries.
On a disastrous bye weekend for the club, Kyle Langford, Darcy Parish and Mason Redman suffered soft-tissue setbacks at training. Langford and Redman were on the comeback trail, and Parish had played the past three matches after missing a big chunk of footy with back and calf issues.
The issues facing Reid are arguably the most worrying because of his emergence this season as a future star key defender.
The top-10 draft pick has played just nine games in his first four AFL seasons after a long list of injury problems.
Reid pulled up sore after Wednesday’s training session in the wet. A scan revealed a small issue, but further investigations have suggested there could be a more serious problem.
It’s the third season in a row the Bombers have been significantly hampered by consistent injuries.
“We do a lot of work and investigation into what’s happening, as all clubs do on a regular basis, and we do that as an ongoing matter of process. The risk for me personally, is that we get distracted from the task at hand, which is 12:30 at Marvel [against Gold Coast] this Saturday, so we’ll just stay locked into that,” coach Brad Scott said on Wednesday.
“That’s the thing about the headlines [of] injury crisis and all these things, I guarantee it’s not a crisis to those players who are on the fringe of selection. It’s an opportunity to put their name up in lights and get the opportunity that they’ve been working so hard for, that’s the silver lining for us.
“We’d love to have better availability, but we’ve had players emerge that wouldn’t have had their opportunity so far this year, so that’s exciting for our fans, and even if we did make seven changes this week, Angus Clarke wasn’t going out regardless. I couldn’t have said that seven weeks ago.”
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