Toast Morabito tracking thread

[Seppo]

Morabito signs to the end of 2014!
http://www.fremantlefc.com.au/news/2013-08-13/morabito-looks-to-2014-after-contract-extension

“It was agreed that it was in the best long-term interests of Anthony and his playing career that we continue with a conservative approach for his return to AFL ranks. As a result, Anthony will have a short break before returning to the club and preparing for the 2014 pre-season.

 

[Purple Jesus]

Haha was just looking for this to post. Happy days.

 

[electricfeel]

 

[yakka man]

Rookie list probably would've been the safest option. But dear lord do I hope he can get in a good pre-season and play round 1.

Please let it happen!!!!!!!!!

 

[Wizard]

Rookie list probably would've been the safest option. But dear lord do I hope he can get in a good pre-season and play round 1.

Please let it happen!!!!!!!!!

Some smart ass would swoop on him with pick 80 if we tried playing that game.

 

[leungtl]

Some smart ass would swoop on him with pick 80 if we tried playing that game.

It also gives him that surety that his short term future is secure, and that he can just concentrate 100% on his rehab and not feel the need to rush anything

 

[UFO Tatsu]

love it !!! go for it mora !!!

 

[Tazmania]

Oh mighty footy gods...surely thou hast smote Morabito enough, we thank thee for thy benevolance in providing surcease to us all through his new contract.

Now heck off and leave him alone for a while!

 

[valkorum]

Smart move from the club and I am very happy for Mora

 

[believe_it]

It's a wise move - Couldn't see him carrying on if it went again so better give himself the very best rehab and preparation

 

[Kepfan]

Awesome news! !!! Would love to shoot his name out again as he runs the whole field and kicks a goal like in that final against hawthorn Morabiiiiitoooooo.!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Proud SJW]

Excellent.

 

[valkorum]

Awesome news! !!! Would love to shoot his name out again as he runs the whole field and kicks a goal like in that final against hawthorn Morabiiiiitoooooo.!!!!!!!!!!

Dont forget the bump by Sandilands (or if your name is Luke Darcy, then Sandilands is Franklin)

 

[Kepfan]

Dont forget the bump by Sandilands (or if your name is Luke Darcy, then Sandilands is Franklin)

That bump was epic, hope to see that fiery giant awakening for finals this year.

 

[couldhavebeen]

This Club and its management deserves a big pat on the back for the support it has given to Morra and the way they have repaid his loyalty to the club after such a run of bad luck .

The effort he has put in to get his body right should be a lesson to all young footballers.

The belief the club has shown in him administrators of all sports should tip their lid to ours for the decision to back a player who goes through hell and back to play a game he loves.

Now we have something else to look forward to at the start of next season as well as showing the Premiership flag .

 

[Dockernut]

Whoot Whoot! Love this club.

 

[BeinPurplenGreen]

Fantastic news, really happy with the outcome, hopefully Mora can relax a bit and focus on next year with confidence and zest.

At the same time, seeing the picture that was with the West online story brought a tear to my eye.

Gee they both look so young and so happy - shows how far Fyfey has come, and yet how he was not seen as anything near the threat that Mora was when the two first played together. Gee, just imagine how different the picture might be at the end of 2014 if they have both been able to play 22 games for us together...

 

[electricfeel]

So much has changed since Mora's last game

 

[imadoka]

Interesting read on research of acl injuries
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/28/why-a-c-l-injuries-sideline-so-many-athletes/?_r=0

 

[leungtl]

Interesting read on research of acl injuries
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/28/why-a-c-l-injuries-sideline-so-many-athletes/?_r=0

Wish I could read that article, bloody Syrian hackers!

 

[imadoka]

Wish I could read that article, bloody Syrian hackers!

For athletes, few sounds are more ominous than the percussive pop that can signal a ruptured knee ligament.
Tears to the anterior cruciate ligament sideline more athletes for longer periods of time than almost any other acute injury. Seasons, even careers, end when the A.C.L. tears.
Until recently, however, researchers couldn’t explain why torn A.C.L.’s were so difficult to treat. But studies recently completed at Boston Children’s Hospital and Rhode Island Hospital in Providence help to elucidate why the A.C.L., almost alone among ligaments, doesn’t heal itself. The findings also shed light on how that situation could potentially be changed, and blown knees more easily repaired.
The particular problem with the A.C.L. — which runs diagonally through the knee, helping to maintain joint stability — is that it is a tiny tissue asked to handle intolerable loads when an athlete’s knee violently twists and torques during contact sports or tumbling falls. The American ski racer Lindsey Vonn tore her A.C.L. during a competition last winter and is still rehabilitating her knee, in preparation for the 2014 Winter Olympics.
The more puzzling aspect of the A.C.L., though, is that it doesn’t get better. Other ligaments in the knee, including the medial collateral ligament, which is often torn along with the A.C.L., reknit after an injury. But the A.C.L. does not, and so past attempts at what doctors call “primary repair,” or fixing the torn ligament by stitching it back together, have generally failed.
In the past few decades, surgeons have instead replaced torn A.C.L.’s with new, rejiggered tendons formed from other portions of the person’s own leg, or from cadaver tissue. Known as A.C.L. reconstruction, this surgery provides patients with a well-functioning knee, but not the knee they once had. (It is also possible to skip surgery and live without an A.C.L., although most athletes opt for reconstruction.)
Early-onset knee arthritis is common in people with a reconstructed A.C.L. — in part, researchers speculate, because no matter how carefully the replacement tissue is braided onto the knee bones, the joint’s architecture changes, causing slight alterations in gait and balance that may eventually wear away cartilage.
So “the holy grail of orthopedic sports medicine,” according to an editorial in this month’s issue of The American Journal of Sports Medicine, has remained finding a way to repair a person’s own damaged A.C.L.
First, though, scientists had to determine why repairs failed, which became the driving mission of research by Dr. Martha Murray, an orthopedic surgeon at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and her colleagues. The team began by studying the knee’s interior microenvironment and noting that the A.C.L. was constantly awash in synovial fluid, which lubricates the knee.
They then picked apart the synovial fluid microscopically and found that it contained an enzyme that dissolved blood clots. This attribute is desirable; you don’t generally want blood clumping inside your joints.
But blood clots can also speed healing, because they “provide a bridge” between the torn edges of damaged tissue over which new tissue can grow, repairing the tear, Dr. Murray said. The knee’s medial collateral ligament, for instance, which is not bathed in synovial fluid, develops a blood clot after a tear and repairs itself. No such clots cling to a torn A.C.L., and it never becomes whole.
So Dr. Murray and her colleagues set out to make a blood clot that could be made to stick to the torn ligament. They found that by dripping blood onto a tiny sponge, they could build a clot that, when covered by a natural collagen matrix, was shielded from synovial fluid. Sutured to both ends of a torn A.C.L., this matrix could provide the scaffold needed to allow healing.
So far, the procedure has been successful in animal studies with Yucatán miniature pigs. In the newest study from Dr. Murray’s lab, published this month in The American Journal of Sports Medicine, a group of these animals had their A.C.L.’s surgically cut and then either left unrepaired, reconstructed with other tissue, or repaired with the blood-clot scaffolding. After 12 months (the equivalent, Dr. Murray says, of at least five years for people), the knees of the pigs with repaired A.C.L.’s were healthier than those of the animals whose ligaments had been untreated, and as stable as those of the pigs with reconstructed ligaments.
More important, the animals that had received the blood-clot scaffolding showed less cartilage damage and incipient arthritis in their knees than did the joints of the pigs that had undergone reconstruction surgery.
Of course, pigs are not people. They are four-legged, for one thing, and not very reliable about following rehabilitation schedules. Their A.C.L.’s had also been neatly slit, not torn and frayed as often happens in human injuries.
It is also important to note that experiments in people using similar scaffolds to repair torn rotator cuffs — which, like A.C.L.’s, do not heal on their own — have produced mixed results.
Still, Dr. Murray is optimistic that this procedure could one day allow injured athletes and others to retain their natural knee ligament and heal more rapidly and with less risk of later knee problems than is currently possible. As a surgeon, she said, “I go into the clinic and see 20 kids every day who’ve torn their A.C.L.” They all want to return to sports and full activity, she said, “and I want to be able to offer them something better than we have now.”
She hopes to be able to begin a human trial next year

 

[StingBitten]

So where will Morabito be at next year?

Let's assume that he doesn't get injured again, or his fitness matches what is expected of him. At the end of this season he was getting close to full-training, so it appears by the start of next year he may be getting to full-match fitness.

In that case is he likely to play in the pre-season? And if he plays well could he be starting sub or staring 22 early in the season?

Or is he likely to go down another path, playing the majority of the year in the WAFL before he gets his chance. After 3 years of not playing footy, will he be a vital inclusion to the side?

Looking at his year in 2010 it's hard to compare to now; our structure was completely different to what it is now. None the less he was one of the best on field; he's been described as both an outsider runner and inside ball-winner, which is exactly what need in our midfield.

With a list teeming with talent it appears someone we expect in the 22 will miss out, pending we don't lose any more players to injury or through the off-season, and we get the players we hope to get.

 

[Nickos66]

His placing in the pecking order will be determined over the pre-season as to whether he's playing WAFL of AFL footy in 2014. I have no doubt he's expected to push for senior selection this year. They wouldn't have kept him on for anything less.

 

[go_the_dockers]

So where will Morabito be at next year?

Let's assume that he doesn't get injured again, or his fitness matches what is expected of him. At the end of this season he was getting close to full-training, so it appears by the start of next year he may be getting to full-match fitness.

In that case is he likely to play in the pre-season? And if he plays well could he be starting sub or staring 22 early in the season?

Or is he likely to go down another path, playing the majority of the year in the WAFL before he gets his chance. After 3 years of not playing footy, will he be a vital inclusion to the side?

Looking at his year in 2010 it's hard to compare to now; our structure was completely different to what it is now. None the less he was one of the best on field; he's been described as both an outsider runner and inside ball-winner, which is exactly what need in our midfield.

With a list teeming with talent it appears someone we expect in the 22 will miss out, pending we don't lose any more players to injury or through the off-season, and we get the players we hope to get.

If no injuries occur, he will do a full preseason and will be ready for the NAB cup. I expect him to be lacking a bit of touch early on and probably play 5-10 games of WAFL and then when his form demands selection he will be picked.

 

[BananaOnTheRun]

if he gets a whole preseason in, i don't expect he'll need any WAFL games.