We still love you Clay.

[jeemak]

Re: We still love you Clay.

We currently have the depth to cover Clay, and give him time to load up his knee slowly. Give it the time it deserves.

If we're working towards the pointy end then we don't have the depth to cover Clay being on the list without contributing now nor in seasons to come.

He's developed as a footballer and given his injury history isn't likely to become a significantly better player than he has shown already. Moving from lower ladder to mid ladder positions like we did this season is one thing, but genuinely being in the hunt takes another level of competitiveness that doesn't allow stagnation on your list or allowances for mature players who can't contribute because of injury, or recover from injury over a four year period.

Many around here don't really rate Norf of the last two or so years, but the reality of their performances is they've made two preliminary finals and won four finals along the way in doing so. Does anyone really think they have the depth to carry a player like Clay when he has had multiple knee reconstructions? Would we get so far ahead of ourselves that we think through carrying players we'll replicate the performances of Norf over the next two years?

I'd hope not.

Being realistic about Clay's situation isn't cruel. He's likely a footballer who understands his situation and our team's situation better than we do.

[Ghost Dog]

Re: We still love you Clay.

Question this argument. On one hand you are talking 'pointy end of season'. Do you mean plural? Because in the next sentence you refer to 'seasons to come'. I think this is being pessimistic for the sake of it. A lot depends on the next 6 months of recovery, ( not to mention our injury list in 6 months time ) so let's wait and see. We have great midfield depth at present. If we can handle Libba out last year and make such dramatic improvement, we will be fine without Clay for this season, if our current players stay healthy.

[jeemak]

Re: We still love you Clay.

Question this argument. On one hand you are talking 'pointy end of season'. Do you mean plural? Because in the next sentence you refer to 'seasons to come'. I think this is being pessimistic for the sake of it. A lot depends on the next 6 months of recovery, ( not to mention our injury list in 6 months time ) so let's wait and see. We have great midfield depth at present. If we can handle Libba out last year and make such dramatic improvement, we will be fine without Clay for this season, if our current players stay healthy.

I'm referring to the pointy end as our team being around in the last two weeks of the finals which should be our goal after last year. I don't think we have the depth to carry anyone in the process, Clay included. It's not a given our overall talent profile in the middle, back or forward lines will take us further than what we achieved last year.

Yes we improved without Liberatore and Smith in 2015, but we also disappointed in our one final last year and we have a long way to go.

Call it pessimism or whatever, but the Norf example I used is apt.

[Ghost Dog]

Re: We still love you Clay.

If we're working towards the pointy end then we don't have the depth to cover Clay being on the list without contributing now nor in seasons to come.

It's our goal to make the pointy end every single year. We had the depth to cover Libba last season. We have a lot more options than 2015, Libba is also looking playable, so even to the layman like me, it doesn't really make sense to be talking about cutting Smith, this early in the season anyway. Stringer, Bont, Luke, Caleb, Adcock, Libba, Wallis, Honeychurch, Hrovat, and so on.

[jeemak]

Re: We still love you Clay.

It's our goal to make the pointy end every single year. We had the depth to cover Libba last season. We have a lot more options than 2015, Libba is also looking playable, so even to the layman like me, it doesn't really make sense, this early in the season anyway.

Interpret it any way you wish to interpret it.

BTW, we didn't have the depth to cover Liberatore last year, we just improved irrespective of him not playing and got bundled out with just a bit better than a whimper of a performance. We also don't have the depth to carry Clay this year or next if we want to figure in the last two weeks of the finals and improve on our most recent finals performance.

There's no pessimism in what I'm saying. The competition is more concentrated the higher you climb the ladder, we tried last year and failed and carrying injured players thinking we're going to improve naturally is a sure path to failure.

[Ghost Dog]

Re: We still love you Clay.

Interpret it any way you wish to interpret it.

BTW, we didn't have the depth to cover Liberatore last year, we just improved irrespective of him not playing and got bundled out with just a bit better than a whimper of a performance. We also don't have the depth to carry Clay this year or next if we want to figure in the last two weeks of the finals and improve on our most recent finals performance.

There's no pessimism in what I'm saying. The competition is more concentrated the higher you climb the ladder, we tried last year and failed and carrying injured players thinking we're going to improve naturally is a sure path to failure.

He's aiming to come back in 6 months, so he says.

[Cyberdoggie]

Re: We still love you Clay.

The only issue with this is his time out of the game. Malthouse made some interesting comments about Marty Clark this week in reference to the hiatus facing the Essendon players. He said that Clark's decision to go home for a year effectively ended his AFL career and that a year out of the game may well end a few careers at Essendon.

Clay's played no football for two years now approaching his third. I'm not sure he has the luxury of holding off on missing nearly 4 years of match footy.

An interesting point but Clark is an Irishman still learning the game fundamentals and plays a very different role.
Smith is an animal that just follows his instinct like a pitbull. Every time Clay has come back he pretty much starred at vfl level and showed that he had lost nothing, I think he'll be ok and that we should just give him a taste at the pointy end to satisfy him mentally. If he goes the whole year without playing a game I think that would hurt his confidence.

Does Mick Malthouse have a hidden agenda though? he does want to get paid a good sum to look after the Essendon dopers for a year.

[soupman]

Re: We still love you Clay.

I agree that list spots are valuable which means you cannot carry a non-performer indefinitely, especially if they have never shown glimpses of being able to perform at the level (Cordy). However you can afford to have about 3-5 players in the long term/speculative range ie. we currently have Hamilton, Prudden and Smith as players who are not in our best 35 on the main list.

If Smith does suffer further setbacks I think we could safely move him to the rookie list if we wanted to give him another opportunity.

[Twodogs]

Re: We still love you Clay.

An interesting point but Clark is an Irishman still learning the game fundamentals and plays a very different role.
Smith is an animal that just follows his instinct like a pitbull. Every time Clay has come back he pretty much starred at vfl level and showed that he had lost nothing, I think he'll be ok and that we should just give him a taste at the pointy end to satisfy him mentally. If he goes the whole year without playing a game I think that would hurt his confidence.

Does Mick Malthouse have a hidden agenda though? he does want to get paid a good sum to look after the Essendon dopers for a year.

He's probably looking at establishing a group of players not far off AFL level to stay fit just in case they get a chance to play. You just never know when your chance will come will be the selling point although we know that all the list spots are filled by December.

[Ghost Dog]

Re: We still love you Clay.

An interesting point but Clark is an Irishman still learning the game fundamentals and plays a very different role.
Smith is an animal that just follows his instinct like a pitbull. Every time Clay has come back he pretty much starred at vfl level and showed that he had lost nothing, I think he'll be ok and that we should just give him a taste at the pointy end to satisfy him mentally. If he goes the whole year without playing a game I think that would hurt his confidence.

Does Mick Malthouse have a hidden agenda though? he does want to get paid a good sum to look after the Essendon dopers for a year.

I don't think so. I met Mick once in the CBD, and he seemed really down to earth, quite the opposite to his media personality. I was quite surprised.

[Bornadog]

Re: We still love you Clay.

[Guido]

Re: We still love you Clay.

I hope we take the extremely conservative path - he came back 9 months after the first reco and re-did his knee 2nd game back, and then he re-did his knee 3rd game back after the next reco with an 11 month break. Would almost be tempted to ice him this season and get him cherry ripe for 2017 - maybe give him some time in the coaches box and help him out with some off-field duties. The reality is if he does the knee one more time his playing career at the highest level is effectively over.

Agree 100%.

Posters have been torn to shreds in the past for suggesting that some players have come back too early from ACL injuries (because, you know, it's only through the benefit of hindsight that we could possibly have known a 29 year old 198cm tall Luke Darcy partaking in full competitive drills less than 8 months after his ACL op wasn't a great idea), but there is some scientific theory behind holding players back for an extra 6 months.

http://www.sciencealert.com/the-prognosis-for-acl-injuries

"Research conducted by sports physician and sports injury researcher Dr. John Orchard reports that a player is almost ten times more likely to reinjure their ACL in the first 12 months after the initial injury. After his third knee surgery Schwarz returned to football after 18 months of rehabilitation. He won his clubs best and fairest award in 1999 and went on play many more years of football, retiring in 2002."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4205204/

"The incidence of a second injury to the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) within the first 12 months after ACL reconstruction and return to sport in a young, active population has been reported to be 15 times greater than a previously uninjured cohort.

The overall incidence rate of a second ACL injury within 24 months after ACL reconstruction and return to sport was nearly 6 times greater"


Note: I'm pretty sure that the latter figure includes all of the first 12 month injuries, therefore - I believe - injuries exclusively between the 12 -24 month time frame would be significantly below that "6 times greater" figure. The incidence in the 18-24 month period would be significantly lower again. Happy to be corrected on that, but even if I'm wrong, 15 times vs 6 times more likely to re-injure is still significant in itself.




Playing or not playing 10-12 games in 2016 will not define his career. Another catastrophic injury will. Cost/benefit and all that - to me the answer is pretty clear. Are playing those 10-12 2016 games worth adding, say, 10%-20%-30% chance to likelihood of re-injury (and effectively ending his career)?

2016 doesn't have to be a "lost' season - concentrating on making himself as elite an athlete as possible in 2016 (work with Craig Motram / other elite long distance runners to improve his endurance day on day, work with sprint experts to improve his explosiveness and 5/20 metre times, pretty much a year of exclusive fitness coaching that the rest of the team won't have access to/time to invest in), getting taught by a master tactician during coaches box stints as Sedat mentioned, these are not useless or wasted goals/pursuits/achievements.

Then he starts competitive footy again in 2017, having given his body the absolute best chance possible, and if it's not meant to be (another injury or it turns out to have been too long out of the game), then its not meant to be. But rolling the dice again, coming back this year after only 12-13 months, with that kind of history of re-occurrence, to me would be borderline idiotic.

[LostDoggy]

Re: We still love you Clay.

Great post Guido. Hard to argue with that logic.

[Ghost Dog]

Re: We still love you Clay.

Love the pic BAD.
Players are still part of a system, even when injured. It's not like it's unexpected in such a high contact sport. Bob Murphy had a reco in 2006, which put him out for a year. Clay is a good player. He's not a lineballer. Absolutely a gun and the club is doing the right thing by backing in the player and the medical staff, who seem confident he can get it right after this third mishap.

[Mofra]

Re: We still love you Clay.

I guess the other argument in favour of giving him extra time is the type of guy he is - there doesn't seem any way possible to hold him back at training, always goes at 100%. Surely that has to be factored in when plotting his return pathway.