I’ve bookmarked this bad boy for posterity
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I would replace Archie with Nick Martin but probably within 2 years. If he can develop his inside game…boy oh boy woweee.
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I took interest in a convo between cricket commentators yesterday. They noted it was almost a right of passage that young skinny fast bowlers have a period early in their career dealing with back stress related injuries… It’s also a regular occursbce with young skinny tall defenders early in their careers. Not all, but many.
I’m confident Reid will work through this period in his growth phase and emerge a really good defender in the years ahead. Like Harry Mackay at Carlton who also dealt with back stress injuries…
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From memory Ridley and Jones both back had stress fractures as well. Is it related to pushing things too far in the gym in an attempt to bulk up? (Hence Dustin was spared!)
For our young talls, back and foot injuries are a right of passage for the first few years.
Stress fractures come from excessive, repetitive loading ,often on immature or growing joints. Loading/training them too hard, too early is a very simple way at looking at this issue.
We would have an initial screening program in place for players at risk, irrespective of height, and a subsequent preventative (p)rehab rogram in place alongside their normal program for those at risk and likely even those that aren’t.
But these are young kids. Are they strict on these programs? Do they keep to it as much as they like their weights program? Are they overenthused and want to get bigger and better quicker like the supporters and news articles want them to? Do they know what is good pain and bad pain? Are they prone to push through and are they educated and counselled on patience and pacing?
I ask because a lack of developmental oversight has been in place alongside the (apparent) poor conditioning for a long time. I think more intensive oversight will help all this.
Second to all that is just bad luck and genetics. They may be more prone to it than others. But I do think having more intensive oversight and education (which we do now) with our young players can help with some of the things I’ve mentioned above which can contribute to the injury result.
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Thank you. I certainly wouldn’t have looked for it in the Zach Reid thread.
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Reid can rest up for another year, I’m looking forward to seeing Zerk continue to make that FB spot his own.
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We need both to pan out, really. Reid takes the Tom Lynch and Charlie Dixon types in a perfect world. Zerk takes the second key forward type who is hopefully a tad shorter.
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Absolutely.
No, I think it’s more to do with their young, tall skinny frames at infancy of careers. Very common in other sports (Eg: Cricket). It’s a regular occurrence. They need to be carefully managed through their developmental period.
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And other teams players…
Wasn’t he only out of action for like 6-8 weeks?
In the next few seasons we will have two x 2 metre key defenders in Reid and Hayes (likely to grow a few cms ) plus the tight defensive type in Zerk or Laverde
Perhaps Ridley/Redman should freed up as swingmen and trained in various positions such as high half forward /wing/even runs in the centre as tall midfielders.
And virtually nothing is known of the genetics of this syndrome (and not much more of most other polygenic traits/complex genetic diseases).
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For those who want to know more about spinal stress fractures
It seems the medicos intervened very early in Zach’s case so we should expect him to fully recover and hopefully have some impact in the second half of the season. He will need to do a lot of work once his initial rehab rest period has passed (about 3 months of no running or weights) to build up his strength and endurance. If he can play before round 15 that would be a bonus.
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The club was talking about him being on a modified program till January. Considering he hand been sighted on the track, it looks likely that his rehab will be longer than that. But has there been any news out of the club to suggest he won’t play until the second half of the year?
This is a question I raised with friends, is he a chance of going oto the LTI list to open another spot?
3 months has him back mid March, then say 6 week mini pre-season if all goes to plan so looking at round 6 or 7 VFL return would be my guess.
Three months is mid April.
Won’t play until after the bye.
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