IF you were to ask me the one difference between the medical treatments of footballers when I played compared to now, it would be the amount of information the clubs have about their players.
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From a coaching and management perspective, the most pleasing thing these days is that we now have a deep injury history for all players, and we know how they will respond to certain injuries and their recovery times.
One thing we do a hell of a lot better than when I played is the pre-emptive stuff. We monitor the players' wellbeing, we know how they're feeling and we take their blood samples to see how their muscles are feeling. Back in my playing days we were a lot more reactionary.
Injury management is a big part of the week for an AFL coach. At Richmond, we have two meetings a week that go for 45 minutes each.
On a Monday we run through the entire list and see what their status is and then we repeat that process on Thursday ahead of match committee to determine who is available to play.
I'm not sure whether this wealth of information has made us more conservative when it comes to injury management, but the amount of information we receive and the large number of medical and fitness staff we have means that we can thoroughly analyse every player and make informed decisions about them.
When it comes to making the call about a player's availability, our philosophy here is that we would rather lose a bloke for one week than for four, so in that respect we tend to take the safe approach and not push the envelope.
One thing about this job is that you tend to become something of an amateur sports physician. All the meetings and all the staff mean I better understand the lexicon and the terminology as well as the complexities of the human body. I now understand the ramifications if you push the body too far.
Club doctors are a critical part of the football operation at our club, although on match days we rarely speak. He makes the call on an injured player during a game and that information is relayed back to me in the box via the board man or someone else.
What tends to happen when a player gets hurt is that we ask for an estimation of how long it might be once we can expect some sort of diagnosis. Usually within five to six minutes we like the doctor to make a call so that we can start thinking about whether to activate the substitute or make major positional adjustments.
There might be an opportunity for a brief chat with the doctor between quarters if something needs explaining, but with so much else going on, it is usually an indirect communication.
One example of the process playing itself out was last year's against Gold Coast when Chris Newman suffered a head knock. We were 'umming' and 'aahing' about what to do because the game was in the balance, but then the doctor made the call that he was no good.
It was a critical game for us and I was trying to win, but at no stage did I consider putting the player in harm's way. I believe it is safe to say that no coach would want to look a player, or his parents, in the eye and admit to putting the player in an uncomfortable position.
Coaches can be in a pretty delicate situation in terms of patient-doctor confidentiality. Obviously there are some situations with injuries where things have to be out in the open. Other times, particularly with regard to mental and behavioural matters, there are things that remain in-house.
Its very important we maintain the confidentiality with our players otherwise the trust factor goes out the window. We trust the doctors to give us the required information but to keep other matters at the required arm's length.
Players understand their bodies better than before, but what remains hard is managing younger players who are on the fringe of selection. They're the ones most likely to pull the wool over your eyes with respects to how they're feeling, perhaps taking some liberties with their wellness charts to make out that they're feeling better than they really are.
Sometimes it is obvious that a player isn't right. They're tight at certain stages and that's when we make the call to get them off the track. It's tough because players are competitive beasts and they love to play. Telling young players that they might need to sit out an extended period is a particularly difficult job for a coach because it can leave them feeling crestfallen.
But we have to manage them to get through an entire season and we do that to the best of our ability.
I watch with interest as the Australian cricketers grapple with their new rotation policy. Football has been heading down that path for some time and we now have a structured approach with our players where they might play three out of every four weeks.
Geelong won the 2011 premiership, in part, because the Cats got off to that 13-0 start and as the wins mounted and their top four hopes became more apparent, they were able to selectively rest players through the later stages of the season to leave them in peak condition for the finals.
Now, it's not so easy to achieve that with a young list because your better players are your younger players and you want to fast track their development by playing them every week.
This year has seen the introduction of a 'rested' category in the weekly AFL injury list. It is something we haven't done well as an industry in the past certainly compared to the NFL, where every team lists every player in the squad and their status every week.
We try to be up front about it at this club. If a player isn't playing, he isn't playing.
