Interchange and injury

It seems it happens once a month or so. A team cops a couple of early injuries, is forced to deploy their substitute earlier than anticipated and loses a rotation. Yesterday at the ’G, it was the Bombers’ turn.

 

What’s really the most depressing aspect of this is the media machinations around it.

 

Coaches will be asked, quite legitimately in our view, how the injuries affected the team’s performance. The coaches, of course denying that injuries made the difference, go on to wistfully dream about a larger interchange bench and highlight injured players remaining on the field for lack of a rotation. James Hird, quite tongue-in-cheek, yesterday drew a contrast with basketball where the bench is a full one-for-one ratio. [Ed: Yeah, an eighteen-man bench! That’s really gonna fly, Jim.] That comment then becomes a headline claiming the coach has slammed the 2011 interchange arrangements.

 

Come on, people! This handwringing about reduced rotations is more about fairness than it’s about player welfare. AussieRulesBlog has a newsflash! The game isn’t fair! We have an oval ball with unpredictable bounce and flight. Ask Stephen Milne how fair the game is — one bounce away from a Premiership.

 

We haven’t done any research, but injuries and a reduced interchange manifestly influencing results in about one game a month doesn’t sound too out of the ordinary. That’s a rate of less than 4%.

 

Hird’s Bombers would still have been disadvantaged with a four-man interchange. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, a team collects more than its share of injuries. Sometimes they’re at training, sometimes they’re during a game.

 

Let’s all just get over it. Teams have been finishing games with injured players forced to remain on the ground since God’s dog was a pup.