MELBOURNE will be keeping its fingers crossed that a knee injury to Olivia Purcell is far from the worst-case scenario of a season-ending ACL, with Melbourne senior coach Mick Stinear hopeful the potential setback won’t keep the star Demon out for “too long”.
Purcell’s injury was the sole sour note to an otherwise dominant display today at Casey Fields, as the Demons flexed their muscle over the Saints to record a 74-point triumph and begin its season with a 2-0 record.
DEMONS v SAINTS Full match coverage and stats
The two-time All-Australian twisted her left knee while attempting to tackle St Kilda’s Georgia Patrikios with just minutes remaining in the second term, walking off the field with assistance from trainers before it was confirmed that she would take no further part in the game after half-time.
Prior to her injury, Purcell had recorded 19 disposals - 14 of which came by quarter-time - and was level with Harris (three first-quarter goals) to being best-on-ground.
"Hopefully scans tomorrow morning (will) get an understanding of Liv’s knee, but at the moment it’s a bit sore and we’ll just hope for the best that it’s nothing that will keep her out for too long," Stinear said post-game.
"I thought the group handled it well today. When Liv came out of the game, the next player just stepped up and the group handled that well.
"Obviously we’ll just wait to see what the scan results are before we respond to whatever happens, but it’ll be the same again and the next person will be able to step and take their opportunity if Liv ends up missing any game time.
"It’s a really close group. We’ll look after each other, but we’ll just wait on that result and then make a plan from there.”
Purcell’s run with injury has been torrid to say the least, suffering a horrific facial fracture in the lead-up to last season which required three plates to be surgically inserted into her cheekbone and eye socket.
After weeks of rehabilitation, Purcell eventually made her long-awaited return — complete with a protective ‘Batman’ mask — in Round 7 of 2024 (also against St Kilda), and this season had made an early affirmation of her importance to Melbourne’s hopes of another finals tilt with a brilliant 34 touches against the Western Bulldogs.
"She loves footy. She’s hardworking and she's put a lot of work into this off-season," Stinear said.
"She consumes a lot of footy. I know she loves ‘Libba’ (Tom Liberatore) at the Bulldogs in the men’s program. His hands are excellent and she’s got some great mids in our side in the men’s program that she’s been able to learn off over the years.
"Hopefully she’s ok and will be back out there soon. But she’s been in brilliant form so full credit to her."
Meanwhile, St Kilda senior coach Nick Dal Santo is resolute that his side will learn from today’s one-sided result to be better in the long run.
The Saints were kept to just two goals for the afternoon, and were significantly stretched by the Demons’ tall stocks and challenged defensively as their opposition dominated the territory battle with an additional 24 forward entires.
"It was a disappointing day. We really need to learn from this, we need to own it and identify the areas we might have done okay in today," Dal Santo said.
"Clearly there are a lot of areas that we need to tidy up, and quickly, but we’ll learn from that and be better for the experience of playing against really good teams.
"I don’t think we’ve got ahead of ourselves or anything like that. We’ve never earned that right.
"It was just a really disappointing performance to be honest. We came here wanting to put up a better showing than that, and that may have still have resulted in a loss, but (today) didn’t really reflect the brand of football that we’ve been trying today."
