AFL Injury Update 01/07/2014

[Jewels]

Depends on the surgeon. There is only so much room for the graft to sit in, in the intercondylar notch. The autologous graft is ideally a similar width to the ACL so that it can, in theory, be subjected to the same forces. Also, the LARS graft should eventually be superseded by the autologous graft (there is a school of thought that synthetic grafts often eventually fail, but by the time this happens with a hybrid LARS, the autologous graft should have well & truly incorporated, hence, it should be a relatively normal size to do its job properly.
Using less donor tissue is really only of benefit if the surgeon is concerned that the donor tissue will be weakened & susceptible to failure, but this is relatively uncommon.

At the ladies lunch a couple of years ago I had a long chat with Mal over his knee issues. He got quite technical when detailing the differences between Lars and traditional recos (hadn't heard of hybrid at that time), but the main point he made was that the big benefit he found with Lars over traditional is that there is only one point of injury to repair. With traditional reco's, not only does the knee itself have to heal but also where they took the hamstring from to make the graft. He said he had a lot of trouble with that after his first ACL, the knee healed well but he had trouble with infections in the donor graft site.

[paulg99]

I noticed that Tim Needham is now called the club physiotherapist. No mention of Matt Cameron. Has there been a change?

I noticed that too.....Matt is listed on the Swans web site as physio, with no mention of Tim. However, on LinkedIn, both record an association of several years with the Swans up to present. Maybe Matt is on vacation, but mid season that would seem a strange move, tho it was good enough for Vlad. I definitely saw him on TV treating a player, I think two weeks ago.

[Melbournehammer]

interesting that on today's one he is suggesting that aj will be consulting the surgeon next week with a view to considering what options for surgery...

[Mountain Man]

Longmire is predicting three returns from injury 'after the bye'. Big risk for a Hawthorn game if all were selected
Do the Reserves have a game on the weekend of the bye?

[ugg]

Reserves also have the bye.

Marsh's hammy injury is going backwards. No mention of LRT or Xavier either.

[Ludwig]

Reserves also have the bye.

Marsh's hammy injury is going backwards. No mention of LRT or Xavier either.

The injury list has X as available and no mention of LRT.