Sorry it’s a bit long but I don’t think we are responding as a club to the injuries we seem to have had for three years. IMO injuries can be due to five main reasons.

1 Luck – there is no doubt that luck plays a part in injuries but to have similar issues for three years in a row would suggest that there is more to it that just bad luck.

2 Age – whilst I don’t have any statistics to prove this I believe it is fairly widely agreed that as a sportsman passes the age of 30 injuries do seem to be more common and the recovery period longer.

3 Technique – In a contact sport such as Rugby League the way you go into contact has to have some effect on the hits to the body. For example if you are upright with an open chest you will eventually take a hit to the rib cage that causes injury.

4. Preparation and warm up – Warm up and stretching before a game is vital as is maintaining that flexibility created in the warm up whilst on the bench waiting to be called upon. Take Louaki (sp) for example, warms up before the Quins game then has 5/10minutes in the changing rooms followed by 10 minutes sat on the bench. Enters the game and within seconds has pulled a muscle in his calf.

5. Tactics – If you play rugby league in ones as FC tend to do you are going to take more hits from defenders. For example one man takes the ball up and is talked by a three defenders with often a fourth coming in to finish the job. Alternatively you have an attacker in support and at least one of those defenders must stay out of the tackle to mark the supporting attacker. Result ball carrier takes less hits and only has to wrestle with 2/3 defenders on the floor.

These observations are from a guy who watches from the stands with no medical history but if I was paying £1.8m in salary to players I would want to know why for three years in a row half my payroll costs are not performing for me. I would find an independent consultant in this field to carry out some research because to say its bad luck for the third year is unacceptable. There has to be another reason be it signing old injury prone players, fitness, preparation or coaching there has to be a reason beyond just bad luck.

Anybody have any other theories or ideas.

I believe this is a major factor in our problems. All of our forwards are constantly running into brick walls, which much take more out of the body than leeds wigan saints warrinton forwards have to take because teams are holding off due to dummy runners and potential offloads.

agree completely....

Nice post Trawlerman and it makes sense but i think the injury thing has been going on for more than three years even back to the McCrae era which suggests summer rugby could be responsible in some way.
My kid is only 15 but i've noticed that in the last years he has had more knocks and cuts and scrapes after games when the weather gets better and the pitches firm up that it looks like hes been fighting,imagine how much more hammer adults will take to their bodies being drilled into the harder playing surfaces.
All your factors you mentioned have to be taken into account of course but when you look at some of the other teams and the injuries they have had to key players i think a lot of sides have been in the same boat the last few seasons.

TBF Pete, the pitches are better equipped in SL, they are watered so no were near the standard which the lads have to play, the professionals do not get grazed knees etc.

Our problems though tend to stem from who's injured not just the number of injuries. Once you get into a situation where critical players are out injured there is a strong temptation to rush them back and/or give them pain killing injections to get them out there. If that's done and a player does come back prematurely then they may not be well enough conditioned to take the hits. Lets face it the close season is relatively short. It is generally held that after say 6 weeks off a player needs a full pre season to withstand the rigours of the coming season and be in good enough condition to face other players at the same stage of preparation. If a player is out for 3 to 6 weeks with an injury they are unlikley to get a chance to re condition and probably get thrown in as soon as the specific injury is cleared up. They then compete with players who are conditioned , haven't had injuries and are battle hardened. I would say that they are potentially more open to new injury , especially the forwards, and the older they are the longer it takes to get back to full fitness.
This may be why the likes of Long and Fitz seem to be taking longer than we expected? Maybe they will be nearer full fitness when they come back than some players who have returned too early in the last couple of years?
So maybe it's been bad luck compounded by bad management?

The conditioning and preparation of the players at our club is very careful and considered!
The reason for so many injuries so often is quite simply bad luck , nothing more , nothing under hand just bad luck

all the above are true BUT when you are winning and playing with a smile on your face then it is quite strange how little injuries you pick up. TRUE

remember also that it is rare for any player not to carry an injury from the first game of the season onwards, and jabs are a way of life for RL players these days, however when your gunning the oposition down week in week out those injuries dont seem quite so bad either as a player!!

I think another reason is 'defence'
If our line of defence is slow and hangs back, the attacking players gather more speed an impact in the collision. They also get more chance to target a particular player to run into.

hally,hally,hally!!!

Bad Luck.
Playing injured players
Signing/giving new contracts to either injury prone or old players.

I played all my Rugby in winter at a time when you went on the field with 13/15 players ...No subs if anybody got injured during the game ..If the pitch was wet and heavy and you got tackled your body used to slid but if the pitch was hard your body use to shudder to a halt ..Once I was playing on a bone dry pitch and I broke away but was tackled from behind has I hit the deck every bone in my body rattled even my teeth..my first two words were F--King Hell ..I blame playing rugby in a Summertime for most of the injuries player are getting Knees/Shoulders/ ..pulls or injuries of the type can happen to anybody I did pass a remark about how long the grass was at Edinburg I know there would be 7 games played on it but that was my opinion

Someone mentioned about shared grounds being harder in that hard pitches suit soccer, so these grounds are potentially more of an injury risk to rugby players.

Could the KC be a factor? How does it compare to Wigan and Hudds?