Adrian Dodoro - Flankers into Mids since 2000 (Part 1)

[MaxFactor]

In terms of talent identification, not sure why you’d exclude father/son players, but include players recruited via trade.

[Ants]

@Lindsay

Well unless the Hanger was actually built on an Indian burial ground, i’d say there’s no reason to say that when looking over a long time period, the spread of injuries would be relatively equal across the comp.

You rightfully point to Hibberd and Ryder being good recruiting, which is true - and as I say above, i have included those in Essendon’s tally.

Um, what? You don’t think plane travel for interstate teams has an impact? Playing at Docklands in the early 2000’s before they fixed the surface? You don’t think better or worse fitness teams have an impact? You don’t think a coach over-working a team doesn’t have an impact?

At its simplest, we know most premiership teams have very good injury years and a lot of players from their best 22 who play most games. When has EFC had a season like that in living memory? I think maybe 2017, but we lost a number of key players for the final.

[Lindsay]

I am unaware of any work into this (i.e. injury rates over time by team), but if you are, i’d be interested to see it. By chance i actually know someone who works as a researcher into sports injuries so i’ve shot them a message to ask if their opinion on this.

[Finding_Nino]

Couldn’t give a stuff about AA just draft footballers who don’t look like sticks

[benfti]

or if they are sticks, let them be freakily good. We draft a lot of plodding sticks

[Ants]

@Lindsay

I am unaware of any work into this (i.e. injury rates over time by team), but if you are, i’d be interested to see it. …

Not really. I’m sure I’ve read things in the past, but I’ve only started recording key articles in the last 12 months.

The below was posted in the Draft watch thread. I’ve bolded a number of relevant sections. The key takeaways for mine are:

1. This matters. And given the science, if one club is behind (or in front) of others, it will produce different results between clubs.
2. For soft-tissue injuries, occurrence increases the chances of reoccurrence. Which means if you stuff it up for one period of time, logically that would imply it has long term consequences.
3. The bit on Freo highlights that team actions, including pre-season actions, impacts soft-tissue injury occurrence.
4. Potentially the guy who was #2 or #1 (Thompson) for four years didn’t rate this stuff. Which happened to coincide with the period we had some shocking soft-tissue issues.

@Laverde2Langford

@Laverde2Langford

As requested by @hambo I’ll share some sports science information for people who may be interested in it. Some may know this, some may be logical when reflected on and hopefully most people get some insights into at least one or 2 things.

I will also disclose that whilst I am sports science trained, have worked in and out of the field. I HAVE NOT worked in sports science within the football industry. I do however, have close connections with some that do.

Righto

Sports Science as it relates to players physical health can be broadly split into 3 categories. Physical Development (fitness building), injury prevention and injury rehabilitation.

Depending on which phase a player is in at any given time will depend on what branch of the staff they will work with.

PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT

Aerobic (endurance) vs Anaerobic (power).

Basically all athletes will genetically be pre-disposed to being unique athletes on the continuum of power vs endurance. However, training will enable them to adapt physiologically.

The most glaring example of this is NBA basketballers vs Nigerian marathon runners.

POWER ATHLETES

For example you will have a player like Laverde, Francis, Tipungwuti etc who are very much power athletes. They can show quite exciting levels of athletic ability whether that be a crunching tackle, 15m dash or a strong vertical leap. In the cases of these players what makes them unique and impactful is the fact they can perform a short burst of effort that creates an advantage of their opposition.

Now these players often have had success at varying levels of competition due to their power. To get them fitter and be able to perform repeat efforts more effectively you can run, run, run them. This will get them aerobically fitter. BUT, if managed poorly you run a very real risk of diminishing their FAST twitch muscle fibre abilities which deliver power efforts. So in Stringers case he is a rare powerful athlete. Trying to build him into a pure midfielder in one pre-season would be unlikely but it would also diminish the physical prowess that makes him special…his power. A good example is Richmond taking so long to build Martin into a dominant midfielder, Dangerfield at Adelaide the same.

This is also why I feel the criticism of Francis is too harsh because he will never be a supreme endurance athlete and if he tries too he won’t be good at footy anymore…he will undermine his skill set.

ENDURANCE ATHLETES

This are the beep test animals. With a reduction in rotations inevitably coming these players will become more important. They run all day. Think Zaka, Stants etc. We mostly associated fitness with these types but if you have a midfield of all of these types you probably aren’t going to have the right dynamic.

MAINTENANCE OF FITNESS THROUGH A SEASON

Due to the length of a season teams will go through variable training loads over the course of the year from high, moderate and low. This will often depend on ladder position as well. But it is not uncommon for teams to really train very hard toward the back end of the season just prior to finals and then back off. This maintains there levels but then freshens them up for the big stuff. Ross Lyon teams are pretty famous for woeful losses late in the season when they had secured a strong ladder position. Only for a week later play like a completely different side. Its toying with form and can cut a fine line but it can be very effective. Getting it wrong can be catastrophic though. During pre-season games especially the difference in energy and effort can be profound. Because in reality many training sessions or internal match simulations will be considered just as important if not more so than a practice match and as such the pre-season match is just part of the the overall picture and not something to “peak” for.

INJURY REHABILITATION

This is highly medical and fairly well understood. Basically without going into the details the clubs will have a good baseline on how fast Kobe Mutch can complete a 20m effort, how high he can jump, flexibility, range of motion etc and as he recovers from injury the rehab staff will place increased load on him to build him back to 100% functionality. Obviously surgical efforts etc are interesting but that is largely outside my knowledge.

INJURY PREVENTION

This is probably the most interesting. At least to me. Without disclosing IP basically some studies have been shown that teams who have the higher availability of their best X players available will stand a significantly higher chance of winning. Teams that have their 19, 20, 21 and 22 ranked players all injured wont be as susceptible to player 6 & 9 out.

So some clubs will be even more conservative with their mgmt of the big dogs. Hence we saw Hepp, JoeDan play half games and we didn’t even see Hooker, Hurls or Fantasia. This may be for other reasons but it is not uncommon. Clubs are super conservative with these types. (Not related to fitness but they will also assess other clubs availability of their best players and then use this data to develop predictive match day win / loss margins…really. So a 3 goal loss to the swans at the SCG may be a comparatively better performance than a 3 goal win against FCFC at the MCG)

Players who have been at a club a while will have individual predictive data that shows injury history and individual training loads. For example, we should have amazing data on what David Myers body can and cannot cope with session by session week by week to understand how not to break him. However, a player is often more susceptible to soft tissue injuries in the same spot recurring once this trend occurs.

The clubs will also have data on overall training cycles week by week including the bye rounds and will adjust the broader load (km, intensity, duration) considerations based on previous years. But there is a fine line between injury prevention and maintaining fitness. That is why often clubs will have a shortened match simulation during the bye weekend just to ensure the body stays in its optimum cycle.

Clubs will also assess every injury and analyse whether it was fatigue related, over-exertion or an impact injury issue. Obviously fatigue and exertion injuries are considered preventable and as such a sports science department will be asked to explain their findings.

Player will also have a responsibility to report general feelings of physical wellbeing and fatigue. These will also be used as a guide in injury prevention.

When it goes wrong?

This is speculative, but I’d suggest Mark Harvey was essentially fired from Fremantle one season for player mismanagement. He reportedly undertook the most ridiculous pre-season where the km run per player was off the charts. That year they kept having soft tissue injuries. He also played players underdone and brought them back too early. It was a disaster. This also demonstrates that although we like to blame fitness staff in the end the coach is ultimately accountable and can overrule the fitness staff… at their peril. Which was apparently happening.

I also have heard that Bomber Thompson didn’t have a high regard for sports science for what it is worth.

Hypothetically, a real example of the JLT game would be…

• Heppell can only complete 6.5km running.

• Hepp reaches 6.5km of running irrespective of the game situation and performance and he is pulled off.

Also interestingly sports science departments will also provide injury predictive data for potential draftees and recruitment teams will be well informed of this prior to making selections.

Just some minor insights but hopefully it clears up the idea that the reason a player isn’t a midfielder or isn’t as fit as Shane Crawford is not because they are lazy. There are significant Genetic and Physiological determinations as to why an athlete performs the way they do.

Here mate. I posted this a few years ago as some were interested. You may find interesting and could cross reference with your mate.

@Laverde2Langford, any thoughts on the discussion on whether it is reasonable due to outside or internal reasons that club’s injury performances will vary across a large sample size? Any thoughts on Essendon’s injury performances?

[Lindsay]

Just btw, the person I’ve asked about AFL injuries is the only ‘source’ I’ll ever have anything footy related.

I won’t say who it is, but they’re a big player in the industry so if there’s anyone in Australia who’d know the research, this person would know (or at least me able to direct me to it).

I’ll post their response verbatim when I get it.

[Laverde2Langford]

@Ants

The below was posted in the Draft watch thread. I’ve bolded a number of relevant sections. The key takeaways for mine are:

1. This matters. And given the science, if one club is behind (or in front) of others, it will produce different results between clubs.
2. For soft-tissue injuries, occurrence increases the chances of reoccurrence. Which means if you stuff it up for one period of time, logically that would imply it has long term consequences.
3. The bit on Freo highlights that team actions, including pre-season actions, impacts soft-tissue injury occurrence.
4. Potentially the guy who was #2 or #1 (Thompson) for four years didn’t rate this stuff. Which happened to coincide with the period we had some shocking soft-tissue issues.

Good summary of takeaways. For interests sake, that period you mention with Thompson and high injury rates was a time when we put the Weopon in charge of the full programme when he had made his name as a weights coach. It’s no coincidence that we were big, strong, injury prone and unable to run out the year. Very amateur.

@Ants

@Laverde2Langford, any thoughts on the discussion on whether it is reasonable due to outside or internal reasons that club’s injury performances will vary across a large sample size? Any thoughts on Essendon’s injury performances?

I don’t have a strong opinion on Essendon outside the Hird Thompson time period with the exception being Daniher. The first time he came back from OP we did not manage his loading correctly and I suspect broke him again. If his loading was better he may not have broken down a second time, but that is speculation that I know some other clubs share.

In terms of larger issues, I am not close to the Essendon situation, however, I know clubs will rate 70 ish draftees who are options for them on a scale of 1 to 4 or 5 based on their risk factors. The medical reviews are done on the players to review there musculoskeletal development. There are some clubs that will not take a 4 or 5 risk factor on that scale.

We historically had some players who were persistently injury prone based on lower back / hamstring related issues which these days would be identified more effectively. These include Winders, Gumby, Dempsey etc but I think we have got better in this regard. Myers I think had some OP from memory.

There was a question around research studies. What is really hard is to differentiate is correlation from causation. For example, Real Madrid did a study that found hamstring injuries were significantly higher when running with your head turned, which at first is very interesting. But then you think about it and how many times do athletes playing ball sports run with their heads looking directly straight ahead??? To me that was correlation not causation and basically a rubbish study. Unfortunately due to the ocmpetitive nature of the AFL landscape research studies are always being run internally but never see the light of day and aren’t shared because they are considered Intellectual Property.

The other 3 factors I find quite relevant are

1. The surfaces teams train and play on. For example the WA teams will not train at Optus stadium because the ground is too hard and elevates injury risk substantially, so they only play there. It is a high injury Frequency ground, especially for lower leg injuries.

2. I suspect the increase in Syndesmosis injuries is due to the change in tackling techniques following rule changes i.e. sling tackles and in the back. So many players getting the legs caught under tackles. Terrible to see.

3. Something is going on at Brisbane that is quite interesting. Their injury rates are incredibly low but for 2 years in a row they haven’t had the juice to play the season out to their highest standard, aka, they haven’t peaked. I also think they play a rolling zone in their back half a lot also. I am curious, I don’t know, just a hypothesis, that maybe their game style requires less running and thus they experience less fatigue and injury risk. Counter to this I wonder if they are “de-conditioning” over the season and not maintaining as high an endurance base as other teams. It may also be down to the warmer weather which reduces acute soft tissue injury risk. Some informed speculation / guestimation on my part but it would not surprise me if both those factors are relevant. Very confident on the weather being a real factor. The “de-conditioning” theory could be completely wrong though. I’ll do some further enquiry on that…

Hope some of that adds to the conversation.

[Bully]

I think dodoro is good at:
Spotting talent, attracting players to the club, the trading game.

Bad at:
Targeting the right players to bring in for modern football, i don’t trust him with high picks and ■■■■ development which is outside his control all make it seem like he is doing an average job.

Therefore his role needs to be limited to his points of strength only as i actually think he is really good at those.

[Bomber_Billy]

Brisbane is also home to some of the best doctors and health professionals in the world…that helps a lot!

[Bomberthug3]

So does Melbourne

[Ess2000]

Safe to say he has been there too long to still have deficiencies. The sooner he is moved on the faster we can move forward

[reincarnated]

Look at the title of this thread…and think of the news about McInnes ad Stone. Does this qualify?

[Deckham]

@Lindsay

I think Worsfold’s less structured ‘do what you want’ style of coaching

That is neither coaching, a coaching style, or Worsfold’s philosophy on it.

[Lindsay]

Have you been living under a rock?

Devon Smith literally publicly stated that he loved coming to Essendon as Worsfold told him to ‘go out and play’ as opposed to playing to structures

[Deckham]

You misrepresented what Worsfold has said for internet points, like many before you.
Congrats.
Do lemmings live under rocks?

[Lindsay]

You’ve lost me

What that Worsfold has said have I misinterpreted above?

[Deckham]

You are referencing two different things with your two posts.

The first, is Worsfold’s stated opinion that ‘great teams need to motivate themselves, to drive themselves’.
The second, is - sometimes allowing players to just play free when they are stuck in a strategic loop, to get their natural flair back.

[Lindsay]

These two points about Worsfold’s philosophy appear to be easily summarised as a ‘do what you want’ looser approach

[Deckham]

There you go again.