Are injuries an excuse?

[Rampaging_Richo]

The typical cliche "we can't use injuries as an excuse" has been tossed around a fair bit recently.

It is all crap. Injuries are the most basic reason why a lot of teams lose.

If the bummers had of had Fletcher, Hird, Rioli etc.. would we have beaten them?

If we hadn't lost Staff & Cogs before the game, Campbo and Flem during and had Otto, Holland, Hall, Blumfield out injured would have we been whipped by WC?

The question will always be - DUNNO, but when key players are injured, it rips the structural integrity out of the team, leaving it vulnerable to defeat.

So far, most of the top 8 have been pretty lucky with injury with the exception of Port.

The tiges have clearly played above themselves so far in terms of having to cover injured players, but it impossible to cover forever.

 

[Parker]

Would better be able to cope with injuries if
our recruiting , list management and injury management wasn't so poor.

 

[PuntRoadRoar]

injuries are frustrating.

an excuse?? well that depends on who is injured really and whether they were in good form before the injury.

injuries are a legitimate excuse but no-one likes to use them because it comes across as a cop out, but everyone knows most of the current tigers injured would walk into our 22 any week.

lets all hope for the rest of the year, the injury gods go easy on the Richmond Football Club

 

[Dean3]

Of course injuries are a huge factor in deciding games. Anyone who says they're not is just spouting claptrap. If you accept that some players are better than others (i.e. if you continually bag some players and not others), then it must follow that when your good players are injured, the team is going to perform poorly.

Many of our good players are currently injured. Thus we are in for some poor performances in the next few weeks. Let's hope we can snatch a win or two and set ourselves up well for when we start getting some blokes back.

 

[The Boss]

RR, I don't believe that it's the number of injuries that you have but the QUALITY of the player that is injured that is important.

Look at last week against WC. Did we honestly expect to win with all our injuries??? When I heard Staff and Cogs were out I was hoping for an honourable loss. It probably wasn't honourable in the end but it was looking like 100 points mid way thru the third quarter, so it could have been worse than 52 points Tiger fans!

Look at the players we had out and take out the equivalent WC player according to the position they play and bring them over here and we would beat them by that margin also.

Ottens - take our Gardiner
Stafford - take out Cox
Coughlan - take out Judd
Campbell (played 20 minutes and may as well not have played) - take out Cousins
Holland - Take out Jakovich
Blumfield - take out Morrison
Hall - take out there 3rd ruckman

That's 7 of our best 22 out including our Number 1, 2 and 3 ruckmen (Ottens, Staff and Hall) our Full forward (Ottens/Staff), our CHB (Holland) 2 of our 3 best midfielders (Cambo abnd Cogs) and an handy utility (Blumfield).

That's 7 quality top players and members of this forum are saying we went over too negative??? Our only chance was turning it into an ugly gring and trying to avoid the shootout that occurred in teh 2nd and 3rd quarters. Please put things into perspective folks.

The important this is we come back and beat teh Swans this week.

 

[TigerFurious]

Injuries tend to bring the weaknesses in any team to the surface rather quickly.

Richmond has been exposed as having too big a gap in quality between its top 11 and bottom 11 players. As Parker said this goes back to recruiting, list management etc.

Last year we suffered a few injuries to key talls. While not as bad as this year it was enough to expose our midfield for the second rate unit it always was. Without Ottens/Richo pulling in 10+ contested mark between them a game we were forced to rely on our midfield to win more ball and deliver it better to our forwards, as we all know that didn't happen.

Arguably the key to Brisbanes success has been their incredible run with injuries over the last couple of years. I'd like to see how Brisbane go without 3 of the 4 best midfielders and a key backman out for long periods.

 

[Koalalill]

It probably wasn't honourable in the end but it was looking like 100 points mid way thru the third quarter, so it could have been worse than 52 points Tiger fans!

That's 7 quality top players and members of this forum are saying we went over too negative??? Our only chance was turning it into an ugly gring and trying to avoid the shootout that occurred in teh 2nd and 3rd quarters. Please put things into perspective folks.

Gotta say I agree with you Boss. Although I am not happy we lost (believe me) 12 months ago it would have 20 goals not 9. The qualityof player we had out impacted on that result. We have relied on Staff all season to chime in with a couple of goals - takes the focus of Richo. We had to turn the game into a grind. In the 3rd quarter when we did that - we kicked 4 straight - the Eagles were forced into bad decision making and it cost them.

The WCE clearly exposed our lack of height by playing Jakovich in the forward line. If we had of had Staff & Rayzor then Jakovich would have been down back. Jackovich in the forward line for them was a huge win.

 

[Tom_Hafey]

The Question: Are Injuries an excuse?

The answer is: Yes and No

Any club should be able to handle a couple of injuries and probably even as much as 4 or 5 depending on the quality of the players involved. An inability to be able to cover that is called a lack of depth and is no excuse.

Any club that has an injury list of 7-8 plus and where those concerned constitute the cream and backbone of the group can legitimately claim injury as a major factor in a loss.

We lost the game against West Coast because of our injuries. Before the West Coast our depth was holding up, but lossing Stafford,Coughlan before the game and Campbell, flemming during the game, it was just too much. No team can be expected to have the depth of half a side, you may as well send out the reserve side.

 

[Tigerdog]

Great post TB totally agree with everything you say, summed it up perfectly.
I do have a thought for you thought and that is, IMO alot of people are more pissed off that we took over 3 injured players and Schulz Macgrath or Hyde (Schulz especially) all who I assume are fit...failed to even travel with the team! That's probably irking a few more people than the fact we had to play a grind type game(IMO most here realise we didn't really have a choice on that one). At a ground famous for soft tissue injuries particularly to the legs why was Campbell even played? If we knew Cogs was out and so to Stafford the chances of Campbell alone making the difference between winning and losing was always going to be slim.Therefore I would have thought it would have been more intelligent to leave him out also.
Sorry just so puzzled by the way they chose to go about selecting the team and the emergencies and who travelled and who didn't etc

 

[iLoVeNeWmAn]

My oath our injuries are an excuse for our poor performance this week.

Take out 3 ruckmen from any other side, one being the most inform ruck/forward in the comp. (Staff);

take out 2 of the teams best onballers, again 2 of the most inform onballers in the comp. (Campbell and Cogs)

take out a new recruit just finding form, not to mention an experienced premiership player coached by the best ever (Blumfield)

take out 2 players in Dunc and Holland who can be more than useful in certain situations

and yes, bloody oath we can use injuries as an excuse!!!

Take out Akermanis and Voss from the centre,

take out Brown, McDonald and Keating from the rucks,

take out Mal Michael and Luke Power,

and now take that depleted Brisbane side to Perth and see how they perform..........

the question we need answered is, how do we stop all these players missing half the *smile* season, year in year out???

P.S. Good to see Ottens training with the main group tonight - Blumfield on 'Living With' on fox said he should be back in 3 weeks. Something to look forward to......maybe!!!

 

[gustiger12]

You are spot on their Newman.

There is not a side in the competition that would not suffer if you took at their equivalent player.

 

[JohnF]

The encouraging news is that barring further injuries to any player, we should have everybody back in about a month. And if we can pinch a couple of wins in the next few games it will really leave us in a good position with regards to having a crack at the finals.

Despite all the dreariness with regards to the injuries its also good to see that one of your most injury prone players, Richo, is finally hitting some good form and has made a stellar return from his injury.