All injections are not equal

With so much breathless rumour-based hyperbole over the supplements affair at Essendon, it's easy to miss some real-world perspectives.

On Saturday morning, AussieRulesBlog found ourselves with some time to spare and Fox Footy screening the 2012 Grand Final Recall. What an interesting show!

The recall consists of team members and coach watching the replay back and answering questions from the Fox Footy representatives — in this case, Dwayne Russell and former Swans coach Paul Roos. The whole is filmed, with inserts of the players' and coach's faces on the screen as they watch the game.

The insights provided by the players and coach, albeit secure in the knowledge of their eventual victory, were very illuminating. But there were two little sequences that gave us pause for thought.

In the first sequence, early in the game, Ted Richards kicks the ball. The kick is extremely ordinary. Laughing, coach John Longmire explained, "Teddy couldn't feel his foot!"

For the fourth quarter, Longmire was joined by Richards among others.

During the course of the quarter, Richards related how the ankle he'd injured the previous week had kept him from training in the week leading up to the Grand Final. He told how his ankle was injected with local anaesthetic before the game — hence Longmire's earlier comment. The local deadened the pain for about twenty minutes and then the pain began to return.

So, at each break in the game, Richards once again had a local administered to his ankle.

It has become part of the circus surrounding the supplements affair that past players have decried current players being injected. Yet Richards' experience wasn't some sort if sci-fi brave new world of football medicine. If not common, it's at the very least unremarkable in the AFL industry that a player plays with the assistance of a local anaesthetic.

All injections, it seems, are not equal.