Are injuries a legitimate reason for our performances?

[Redlight]

There's a lot of 'I know we have injuries but...' discussion that happens on Nick's and it made me curious about our injury list vs other sides.

The clubs with the worst lists (in pure number terms) are...

Gold Coast - 19
Fremantle, GWS - 14
Collingwood - 12
Brisbane - 10

The clubs with the least injuries...

St Kilda - 3
WCE - 4
Swans - 5
Nth Melbourne,
Hawthorn, Adelaide,
Richmond, Essendon - 6

The rest, obviously, between 7 and 10.

There's clearly outliers, like GWS (that's scary), and St Kilda (pretty funny), and the quality of the injured players is clearly important, but there seems to be a general correlation between large injury lists and unexpectedly poor performance.

It seems to me that injuries are an excuse. Not a whiney, avoiding responsibility kind of excuse, but an actual, genuine reason for our predicament.

[Mugwump]

I'd hypothesise that the greatest impact is not necessarily the long-term injuries, but the turnover from week-to-week they cause.

Raw talent obviously matters, but stability and cohesion is probably just as important. It'd be interesting to test that proposition statistically, if I had the time...

Then there is the possibility that some coaches can coach around injury better than others. That's probably even harder to measure.

[Redlight]

I agree with that, but I think one goes hand-in-hand with the other.

[jackcass]

I certainly believe injuries effect performance.

It's not just the quantum, but who. You lose a Swanny and you're either relying on player 23 on your list to cover for 1 of the best players in the league or the other 21 picking up some of the load. Each additional player you lose has a similar flow on effect. When you get to a point where you're missing 7 or 8 or 9 of your "best 22" it gets bloody tough.

It's not just the LTIs, it's the churn. Top teams have either a really stable core senior 22 or a senior established list. We haven't had either. We've had 6 players who have played every game, another 4 who have played 9, and we've used 36 players year to date.

It's not just losing players going into selection, it's who and how many you lose during games. The Doggies game was as bad as it gets. Losing 1 of your best minutes into game 1 of the season is as bad as it gets. You lose rotations and you lose flexibility, it can undermine team balance. Generally I'd say losing a running type is more impactful than losing talls.

[Presti35]

Are injuries a legitimate reason for our performances?

They are a part of the problem. But not THE problem.

Our goal kicking is terrible and all those goals we let thru from the goal square were humiliating. Does that come down to injuries? Basic skill errors have killed us.

We won just about all the stats on the weekend. The injuries dont help, but there is a lot more to the over all picture. And yes it also highlights the fact that we obviously lack depth.

But if we had a full list to choose from, how many more wins would we have on the board? Would we have over run the Dogs if those 4 guys didnt go down? Would we have beaten Carlton, the Demons or the Saints? And would we have suffered the big losses to Swans, Eagles and Port?

Without the injuries, would we be in the run for a top 8 or even a top 4 spot?

I guess we'll never know the answers, but whoever is out there in that glorious black and white jumper needs to be able to do their job on the day.

[The Boy Who Cried Wolf]

If the club starts to use the old 'injuries excuse' again this year to explain why we're shit - I'm frankly going to vomit.

[Culprit]

It's not so much the injuries, it's who is actually injured.

[ronrat]

[qldmagpie67]

Injuries are a definite factor but more so it's the player and his position/importance to the team structure that hurts and the clubs ability to cover for that lose.
Losing Swan and Elliott were huge. They were slated preseason to be focal points in our forward line. We don't have like for like replacements for either. Yes Faz has stepped up but he doesn't do the rotations through the midfield like Elliott does and we don't have a another Swan who can kick goals and then run through the midfield and read a game so well.
Ramsay was playing well before he went down. I would state I thought he had been our most consistent defender again no one who we have tried has delivered
Pendles started the year busted it showed the difference when he was moved to the midfield how it started to get competitive.
Witts hand after coming off a good preseason form
Varcoe 2 stints out with a hammy
Sidey being suspended
Williams run off HB
Langdon gone
Brown gone
Adams gone
Moore gone
Now that's 12 players who would be in our best 22-25 who have missed all or parts of the season
I didn't include Scharenberg who more than likely would have been in or around the best 22
Couple this with our most dominate forward being so off song he hindered our efforts
It has given the team no chance to get any cohesion going and more so it's robbed us of so much vital experience on every line
Using players ranked 30+ on your list constantly leaves to many holes
I think we have now used 37 players this year out of 44 and 2 players can't be used in Keefe & Thomas so we are basically at the bottom of our barrel
Yes the Suns have 19 on there injury list but how many of those have been season long injuries (looking at them most are short term 2-4 weeks) but look at there start to the season when they didn't have injuries compared to now.
The club hasn't used injuries as a excuse they like to use the hawk philosophy one out one in but the difference is age & experience profile.
We just need to find out why we get so many injuries and is there anything we can do better to make sure we don't get this again going forward

[jackcass]

[mattys123]

Yes, of course they are, we have a large quantity of quality players out injured, it is going to effect your ability to perform.

BUT;

Injuries aren't a reason to lose by 11 goals to a side that won't even play finals.

I can accept losing, I can't accept our players dropping their effort every few weeks as soon as things get tough.

[jackcass]

[jackcass]

[MatthewBoydFanClub]

The Bulldogs have suffered two key injuries to their back six this year, yet their defence again held up against one of the best attacking sides in WCE on the weekend.
Injuries do affect how well you play but are not the key determinant factor in winning or losing. Winning is determined by a combination of skills, fitness and experience of the competing teams. In an equality based elitist sport like AFL where players are drafted according to ladder position at the end of the year, there is not much difference in skill level between the first team and the eighteenth team. Age wise, there's maybe two years difference between the youngest team and the oldest team. And AFL coaches all have support staff and elitist training facilities that produce AFL footballers with about equal fitness.
So in my view, winning or losing, all comes down to game plan, player execution of the game plan, willingness of players to follow team instructions, individual acts by players in causing ball turnovers resulting in goals, or preventing goals being scored against the team and most of all the general confidence of the team of running onto the ground with the mindset of believing they have the opposition's measure.
We're not winning, in my view, in the games we have lost, because we failed to back each other up, failed to cover the space the opposition players ran to, failed to stop the opposition scoring, failed to talk to each other and failed to execute the skill levels expected of an AFL player that the players execute every day of the week on the training track. This is systematic of a team devoid of confidence, whose confidence was destroyed in the first game against Sydney, momentarily got its confidence back in the last 5 minutes of the Richmond game, the first quarter of the Essendon game, the two games against Brisbane and Geelong following the Carlton loss and continued that form into the Bulldogs game for the first three quarters, before losing it again in the last quarter.

[RudeBoy]

Injuries have been a major factor, plus the rapid loss of form of Cloke and Brown.

I also think that we lack a big, strong bodied midfielder to smash open packs and get the ball out to outside players like Pendles and Sidey. I think Treloar should be used more as an outside player, but we need a bigger bodied mid to get it out to him. De Goey was groomed for this role, and should be up for it in a year or two, but fwiw, I suspect he's been playing injured all year. Losing Adams is a massive blow.

The biggest disappointment for me this year has been the performances of our midfield group. With Pendles, Treloar and Sidey, we should be dominating clearances, but instead we are being beaten there most weeks. This, more than anything else, is our Achilles heal.