I moved from Adelaide to the goldy 15 years ago and started following the NRL and supporting the Brisbane broncos.. and ive noticed one or two things in following both codes... NRL players seem to recover from injury faster than their AFL counterparts.. be it knees, shoulders, ankles or feet..
Today it’s been reveiled broncos player Andrew McCullogh May be fit and ready for NRL round one in a couple of weeks after last year at the end of July suffering a terrible knee injury.. I remember the game and the injury as his team mate 110kg Adam Blair fell across his leg busting both his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and medial collateral ligament (MCL). It loooked terrible and I remember thinking as I watched it, and as an AFL fan, gee that’s one of the worst I’ve seen he’s gone for atleast all of this year and most of next. But articles over the next few days at the time were quoted as saying of his up and coming reconstruction surgery “The rehabilitation time for such an injury will give him some chance of being ready to return around the start of the 2018 NRL season.”
And here it is 7-8 months later and he’s pushing to be fit for round one in a couple of weeks.. and he’s knees fine..
The pressure on NRL players knees, especially players who play in Andrews position, would have to be equal to or worse than that of and AFL player given they run in fast short bursts and do side to side dodging and weaving in play getting tackled below the waste and quite often by a couple of players at a once from different angles.
How do they seem to come back from injury faster?..
Several articles on his recovery mention the use of an anti gravity treadmill and I take it the AFL players use them too..
I’ve probably dribbled a bit here and maybe in the wrong thread but I just find it interesting, especially in light of Brodie Smiths predicament, that NRL players seem to spend less time on the sidelines when injured..