Three days into the Aussie Rules pre-season, we've already had two major knee injuries that threaten to end the season for two of our best and brightest: Tom Libertore of the Western Bulldogs blew an ACL in their game last night against Richmond, while the West Coast Eagles confirmed that they've lost defender and 2014 best-and-fairest Eric Mackenzie with a similar injury for an undetermined amount of time after defeating Carlton on Friday night.
Pre-season is a terrible dilemma for coaches of all sports: how do you prepare your team for the "real" season without endangering your still-out-of-condition athletes? They've got to play, or they won't get into game readiness - even the players tell you that - but if they're out of shape, are they safe to play? ACL injuries are notoriously fickle occurrences anyway: these could have happened to any athlete at virtually any time, and Mackenzie's injury in particular was almost ludicrous in its lack of contact. Perhaps it's simple coincidence that these two injuries to star players happened in the first three days of pre-season...but it makes you think.
(And here are the highlights from Friday and Saturday's games - West Coast v Carlton on Friday, Brisbane edging St. Kilda on Saturday afternoon, as well as the Richmond / Western Bulldog game.
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