Seems to be an injury occurring with increasing frequency across the sport

All the best to Crofty getting back from it

That’s the first thing I thought. How can one club be so very unlucky consistently over 2 seasons with injuries I don’t know.

I also have him down as the most obvious replacement for Tupou. Lad shows a lot of promise. I hope this doesn’t hinder his progress but players luckily can come back just as strong these days.

Maybe because we were so lucky with injuries in 2016/17/18, but yeah it seems we are paying an overly heavy cost.

On the plus side as a club, we must be experts in treating and rehabilitating ACL injuries!

I honestly can’t understand it. All talk the weeks running up to round 1 we had a clean bill of health and over the course of 6 games we’ve had to do without 10+ players and had to play players out of position and even bring in loan players. There must be some contributory factors.

Some of it I feel lies in the new rules and the fact more stress is put on players bodies with less recovery time between sets/ in matches.

Luckily though as you say, we have become experts in ACL management with a Tupou, Arona, Arundel last few years. Armed with information you have to be positive the lad can push through this.

I think this is the major contributory factor, along with the extra training that is having to be done to increase fitness to cope with these new rules. We are not alone with having plenty missing so far, pretty much all clubs have been missing a good chunk of players at some point. The players bodies are reaching breaking point and this contstant desire to make the game faster and faster is proving counter productive.

I think the mission to speed up the game has gone too far and adding in this ball steal rule is making for very fast and messy tackles/rucks. Days gone you’d see a lot more quality plays because teams had to try and get round or unlock defences. These days its all about rolling the opposition for the 6 again and putting your opposition in the back foot to tire or expose a gap. There’s very little inventive play compared to a few years ago and it’s more autonomous than quality plays. Don’t even get me started on the poor officials having to manage more and more rules and messy rucks in a faster game. This is exactly why mistakes are prevelant in the game this year.

Ultimately, the teams struggling like us haven’t adapted to the new rules as well as teams like saints/Wigan in particular. That’s a different point though.

Only one, bad luck.

I'll accept people's opinions on CC coaching, certain players' attitudes, or the way the club is run even if I don't agree. But there is nothing special about our conditioning and training. I know that's not what you're saying but I'm just putting it out there.

I know a few people in the game and one or two suggest Clawson is a bit old school but nobody has ever said his methods are more likely to cause injury than any other, see most of the other seasons he's been in charge where we have been fine. Ditto the physios.

As for the new rules, I don't see it, to be honest, many tackling styles are outlawed and stiff arms and shoulder barges are very rare.

In the past, I can recall times when almost every first-teamer was our and we had teams of kids and loans, far more than now.

Our problem isn't the number of injuries, I bet a few others are in a similar boat, it's which players. Nearly all our injured players are pivots or backs when usually it's the forwards.

Only TJ is an oddity, his luck is just appalling.

To be fair you a lot of fans in Australia saying that speeding the game up is breaking players.

Could be but I feel that's more fatigue I can't see where it would contribute to an early-season injury crisis, poor old Crofty was only playing lower Championship in only his second game.

Not just bad luck IMO Vasty, unfortunately there are a few clubs out there that deliberately apply tackle techniques that result in these sort of injuries that could of been avoided. Not saying that`s what's happened here by the way.

But it is because those teams don't just do it to us, like it or not there is always attrition to these incidents at all clubs, we just seem to get more injuries due to dirty play than most.

It's like TJ's injury, it was a bit dirty but you wouldn't have expected it to put him out for 8 chuffing weeks. He's copped far worse in his career and he's been fine.

Not condoning dirty play but considering what Tanginoa did a few weeks back we are not without malice, it happens, we are no more victimized than anyone else, as I say, just unlucky.

Sorry