Head of Physiotherapy and Medical Services Damian Raper provides an update on the injury front as the playing squad work their way through a tough pre-season schedule ahead of the 2022 season.

General overview

It's been an interesting pre-season so far. We have had our challenges from a Covid standpoint with some players going into isolation, but overall we have had some good player availability. As training loads increased over January, we have had some players who have picked up some niggling injuries but have only missed a session here and there.

In the last two weeks, we have played some intra-club games where we have had some contact injuries which have been unfortunate but not unexpected. Now that we're getting into February, we're starting to see an in-season training model come in so there is much more of a focus on match play and player recovery. 

Sam Naismith

Sam is now four months post his ACL reconstruction where he had a two-stage repair. The first stage was done back in June last year, and the second stage was done at the start of October. He's been reviewed by his surgeon who is happy with his progress. Sam is now working hard in the gym with our rehabilitation team and working on strength around his quadriceps and hamstrings, and doing lots of balance and proprioception exercises, and is starting to work towards running over the coming weeks. 

James Rowbottom

He was one of those unfortunate players who suffered a contact injury in one of our intra-club games. He was in a contest where he got his finger caught on one of our other players and sustained a fracture to his fifth metacarpal. He had some surgery and will be reviewed next week in regards to a return to play timeframe.   

Marc Sheather

Marc was having a really good pre-season and trained really hard over the off-season. He had some pain in his foot so he had an MRI scan and it showed some minor bone stress in his foot. As a result, we put him in a boot for a couple of weeks to settle the pain down. He has had a modified pre-season to date, he is running well at the moment but he won't be in match play over the coming weeks.

Ollie Florent

It was really unfortunate for Ollie who was training well, but in match play he got tackled by one of his opponents and got his ankle caught underneath him. He suffered a lateral ankle sprain and spent a couple of days in a boot just to settle that down. We expect him to get back into training next week.

Callum Mills

We have spent a fair bit of time with Callum throughout September and October working on his strength. He started running towards the backend of last year and slowly build up his training loads, and is on a modified training program at the moment and working on getting him back into match play.