Roast Our medical team / Injury prevention and conditioning staff

the flying ham

Cancelled
Dec 12, 2006
7,403
16,059
AFL Club
North Melbourne
If a team runs out of gas guess what happens? Lack of one and ones, lessened ability to get to a contest, more opposition pressure = turnovers and lack of skills

We looked clean and had elite skills in the first half when we had legs?! Then after the second half, due to our lack of fitness and ran out of steam, we started to fumble, couldn’t keep up the pressure and our skills went to sh*t. It’s easier to use our skills when there is shitloads of space and uncontested ball. As soon as that drops off the opposition had free players everywhere and it made it way easier for them to execute by foot and hand. This is not a ******* coincidence.

How come every opposition is able to score and run over us in every 4th quarter? Even if we had the best skills in the comp it wouldn’t make a difference if we are unable to run out games.

I’m sorry but it was a game of 2 completely different halves today and it again, exposed us.
I get our fitness needs work but we were a team of kids playing men. Seasoned campaigners who are hitting their peak strength and fitness vs a dozen blokes who havent clocked up 50 games. And 2 of our first years didnt play at all last season. You keep banging on about fitness yet cant acknowledge we are still pups. They need games, km in the legs and pre seasons. They cant find it in a week mate
 
Jan 23, 2019
11,904
43,659
AFL Club
North Melbourne
So fitness hey, Fly? Running up and down on the spot after ht was good. Did we hand out cement boots at the break?

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ha well as I stated we can't do anything about it this year, but we can next pre season. I haven't watched the game as yet. But clearly we took it right up to an undefeated side, without Tarrant, Anderson, McDonald, Polec, Dumont, LDU.

We'll be fine when fit. This i feel will be the last year of shite fro us and I'm calling the rise up the ladder starts 2022.
 
Jan 23, 2019
11,904
43,659
AFL Club
North Melbourne
If jona segal is still there next year we are deadset taking the piss

Enough is enough

Jokes on you Ziebell ,

Segal has vast experience in the sports science industry and has worked at the Kangaroos since 2000.

"Jona is widely regarded as one of the best in the business," North's general manager of football Cameron Joyce said.

"He is an extremely knowledgeable, loyal and hardworking professional that adds tremendous value and ability to our club. This promotion is a credit to his unparalleled work ethic and dedication."


Unparalleled Cam reckons.
 
Jokes on you Ziebell ,

Segal has vast experience in the sports science industry and has worked at the Kangaroos since 2000.

"Jona is widely regarded as one of the best in the business," North's general manager of football Cameron Joyce said.

"He is an extremely knowledgeable, loyal and hardworking professional that adds tremendous value and ability to our club. This promotion is a credit to his unparalleled work ethic and dedication."


Unparalleled Cam reckons.
20 years with us fml

Has anyone been around since then still with us?

Jona must have some serious pictures of the board
 
Sep 11, 2014
10,392
20,191
AFL Club
North Melbourne
Jokes on you Ziebell ,

Segal has vast experience in the sports science industry and has worked at the Kangaroos since 2000.

"Jona is widely regarded as one of the best in the business," North's general manager of football Cameron Joyce said.

"He is an extremely knowledgeable, loyal and hardworking professional that adds tremendous value and ability to our club. This promotion is a credit to his unparalleled work ethic and dedication."


Unparalleled Cam reckons.

Why is this happening? Haha
 
Jan 23, 2019
11,904
43,659
AFL Club
North Melbourne
So who was the senior player bemoaning our lack of fitness which cost us the game last week.

Rhetorical question of course . But at days end at least we know our problem and will rectify the issue .
 
Sep 11, 2014
10,392
20,191
AFL Club
North Melbourne
So who was the senior player bemoaning our lack of fitness which cost us the game last week.

Rhetorical question of course . But at days end at least we know our problem and will rectify the issue .

In the media?

It was lack of fitness and our horrible injury list. IF we were fit we could run all over Melbourne. Getting players back to playing after being injured is awful too. The amount of mismanagement is ridiculous.
 
This was the article that was posted back in 2016 before things went to s**t:


North Melbourne has found the fountain of youth after 6-0 start to the season
HE’S been called the football equivalent of a horse whisperer but not many fans have heard of him, maybe except for a few hard-core North Melbourne supporters.

GLENN McFARLANE
May 7, 2016 - 7:00PM
https://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/.../4d549a82160182b94e2aadf3dbd18049#share-tools


HE’S been called the football equivalent of a horse whisperer. One former colleague swears he has ‘Zen Master’ qualities; another insists that if the human body was an engine, he would be the mechanic fine-tuning it.

His name is Steve Saunders, and if you haven’t heard of him, don’t feel left out.

Few footy fans know who Saunders is, other than hard-core North Melbourne supporters contentedly watching their team streak to a 6-0 start to the 2016 season off the back of a healthy playing list, the best injury-prevention program in the AFL and a core of veterans playing some of the best football of their careers.

But the AFL industry — indeed the sports industry as a whole — knows a lot about Saunders.

For more than two decades, he was one of the leading go-to men for groin injuries — he was once dubbed ‘the groin guru’ — and he is now into his sixth season as North Melbourne’s high-performance coach and managing director of sports science and medical services.

That relative anonymity might change if the Kangaroos can turn their exceptional start this season into the club’s fifth premiership.

There is still a long way to go for that to happen, but what is certain is that AFL rivals are watching on enviously at the healthy state of the North Melbourne list.

In Saunders’ time at the club, over the past five seasons, the Kangaroos have had — by far — the fewest soft-tissue injuries in the AFL — 47 per cent lower than second-ranked Adelaide, and 50 per cent lower than the league average.

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I played with ‘Waitey’ and he always had a few issues. Now he knows he has got his body right. His body is like an engine and Steve’s the mechanic tuning it up.

- Brendan Fevola

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North Melbourne was at pains to point out this week that the welfare of its players was a collaborative effort from a wide-range of staff members, not solely because of its highly-rated, high performance coach.

In many ways, this state of the Kangaroos’ list has been something that has been meticulously mapped out by Brad Scott even before he agreed to become senior coach in late 2009.

Scott has long held an interest in sports sciences.

He and Saunders, as well as strength and conditioning coach Dan Meehan, and nutrition and conditioning coach Jona Segal, have been instrumental in setting up the program that has had many of the club’s older bracket flourish.

“North are absolutely humming at the moment,” former AFL star Brendan Fevola, an advocate of Saunders’ healing powers, said this week.
“Just take a look at what they have been able to get out of their older guys.”

“I played with ‘Waitey’ (Jarrad Waite) and he always had a few issues. Now he knows he has got his body right. His body is like an engine and Steve’s the mechanic tuning it up.

“’Boomer’ (Brent Harvey) and Drew Petrie are flying, and we know Daniel Wells is a superstar when he is fit and firing. North have just got all those guys humming along at the moment and that’s a huge bonus.”

Fevola went to see Saunders at his private clinic in Adelaide, along with Lions teammate Jonathan Brown, when the two suffered adductor injuries during the 2010 season. It was several months before Saunders accepted a lucrative offer to join the Kangaroos.

He said Saunders worked miracles: “He just knew exactly what was wrong with me as soon as he saw me ... he’s a guru and he’s showing that now at North Melbourne.”

Six Kangaroos who will take the field against St Kilda today are 30 and older, including Brent Harvey who turns 38 this month, and 33-year-old Drew Petrie, who will represent the club for a 300th time.

Shaun Higgins with physio Steve Saunders. Picture: Hamish Blair

Shaun Higgins with physio Steve Saunders. Picture: Hamish Blair

Two others, Scott Thompson and Sam Gibson, will be join the Kangaroos’ 30-Something club before the end of this month.

And the average age of the Kangaroos’ team last week, which beat the young, impressive Western Bulldogs, was a ripe 27 years and 330 days.
No team older than that has ever won a flag, but there is a growing feeling that this North Melbourne side is perfectly poised challenge for this year’s premiership, after back-to-back preliminary finals.

Petrie laughed this week when asked about the perceived “fountain of youth” at Arden Street: “I can tell you there is much more to it than just a couple of glasses of special water we drink.”

“The credit must go to the people who implement and plan what our preseason looks like, and what our weekly program is from a training point of view.”
Much of it revolves around strengthening the core muscles, working hard on massage and manipulation, on pilates and on what the club calls “injury prevention”.

Ask anyone at Arden St to speak about exactly what takes place, and they are reluctant to talk specifics, not because it is anything underhanded or out of the ordinary, but because they want to retain the competitive edge they believe they hold.

Former Kangaroos chief executive Eugene Arocca said Brad Scott’s mindset was always fixed on making the club a destination for players who wanted to get the best out of their bodies.

Arocca said: “We interviewed Brad the first time and at the end of it, we said: ‘Is there anything you want or desire if you get this job?’”

“He said ‘Yes, there is this bloke in Adelaide called Steve Saunders, I would love him to come across.’ We knew of him, JB (chairman James Brayshaw) knew how good he was, but we didn’t think we could afford him because he had a private clinic.

“Then a year and a half later the opportunity to get him came up.

“I think it became a really seminal moment for the club. We thought if this bloke is as good as we believe he is, and with the new ($15 million Arden Street redevelopment) facility coming on board, the club was going to be in a position to provide the players, and Brad, with everything they could possibly need.

“There are some key moments in this club’s recent history (after deciding not to go to the Gold Coast). There was getting the Arden St. facility built, getting rid of the shareholders (and returning the club to the members), employing Brad Scott as coach, employing Heath O’Loughlin as our media man, and employing Steve Saunders.

“It was a real step away from well-meaning volunteers who loved the club to a really professional outlook, and Steve has been an important part of that.”

At that time, Saunders was consulting with up to eight AFL clubs, Cricket Australia, the South Australian Cricket Association, the Australian Track and Field team, the Australian Ballet as well as other overseas sporting clubs and organisation.

A PhD who also lectured in universities around the country, Saunders was noted to have “a special interest in the relationship between neuromuscular control of the lumbo-pelvic region, injury and athletic performance ... Much of this work has dealt primarily with the evaluation and training of lumbo-pelvic control and the assessment and treatment of lumbo-pelvic dysfunction and pain.”

It was a long way from the time as a substitute fieldsman for South Australia in a handful of Sheffield Shield matches while working as a physiotherapist with the team that also boasted a promising young cricket named James Brayshaw.

“He wasn’t a great fieldsman,” former Adelaide Crows star Chris McDermott recalled this week.

“But he was the best in getting your body right.”

McDermott was an early advocate of Saunders when groin injuries threatened to derail his football career. Against the wishes of the Crows, he went to see Saunders and ended up taking half the team because the success rate was so strong.

“He would work on strengthening your core,” he said. “He was huge with all that, and was way ahead of his time in teaching you about core stability. He didn’t hook you up to machines and wait for the light to go green.

“It was pain like I’d never experienced. But he kept me on the park.

“Clubs were always trying to get him to work with them full-time, but he wouldn’t do it as he had his own private clinic. It took Brayshaw to get him (to North Melbourne) ... no Brayshaw, no Saunders. That’s how it was.”

Daniel Wells is fit and in top form. Picture: Wayne Ludbey

Daniel Wells is fit and in top form. Picture: Wayne Ludbey

Scott said this week: “The goal right from the start was to present a vision to our current players and our future players to create an off-field environment that was going to enable them to play their best football.”

That has come to fruition with the likes of Shaun Higgins and Jarrad Waite joining the club, and thriving, despite enduring injury-prone careers elsewhere.
Alex McDonald, from McDonald Sports, confirmed this week that one of the reasons why Waite chose North Melbourne was because of its sports sciences program, driven by Scott and Saunders.

Scott acknowledged Saunders’ importance, but emphasised “you are only as good as your support team. I don’t want to individualise, they all put in ludicrous hours and have a real passion for the footy club.”

He added: “I still hear some people talk about sports scientists taking players off the ground, and not letting them train or kick for goal. What we wanted was to have a sports science medical team that would support the football program we had, not a sports science medical team that would inhibit the football program.
“We have put an enormous amount of work into it, the players have bought into it and we are now reaping the rewards.”
 
Apr 24, 2013
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Heard some questionable things during his tenure but considering we've turned into a wartime triage tent since who knows what to believe.

I'm prety sure Waite & Higgins were classified as "permanently ****ed" when they showed up at Arden Street.
 
Heard some questionable things during his tenure but considering we've turned into a wartime triage tent since who knows what to believe.
Do you remember what happened a few weeks after that article came out?
 

big_e

Existential crisis management consultant
Apr 28, 2008
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I'm prety sure Waite & Higgins were classified as "permanently f’ed" when they showed up at Arden Street.
The Higgins one is overstated - he had one bad year (two years before coming to us), but played 20 games the year he left them, and then no fewer than 17 games in the four years before that. From memory it was more about security and opportunity than anything else.
 

Passmore

Brownlow Medallist
May 22, 2001
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The Higgins one is overstated - he had one bad year (two years before coming to us), but played 20 games the year he left them, and then no fewer than 17 games in the four years before that. From memory it was more about security and opportunity than anything else.
Really the same could get said of Waite. He only missed 3 games in his first season at North, the remaining 3 years his games played we're back to previous levels.

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You and I were on the same page on this but the current regime makes Steve Saunders look like a miracle healer.
Look at the injuries. Taz, kidney issue. LMac, Corr, Anderson, and Boner all unlucky in-game injuries. Perez with a knee. Its only Spicer, Polec and Hayden with soft tissue injuries.

And Adelaide are having their share of injuries while Saunders is there.
 
Jun 9, 2001
37,642
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Fogarty Street
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North Melbourne
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St Johnstone
Look at the injuries. Taz, kidney issue. LMac, Corr, Anderson, and Boner all unlucky in-game injuries. Perez with a knee. Its only Spicer, Polec and Hayden with soft tissue injuries.

And Adelaide are having their share of injuries while Saunders is there.

Yeh possibly. The long Dumont rehab seems a little curious but calves can be bastards.

Without inside info I'd put LMac at 50/50 luck/blame. A good conditioning coach would be testing their strength/mobility per joint and actually doing something about addressing it. Kinda like Kangatech was meant to do, but actually doing it and not just advertising that you do it.

Completely from the outside I'm going to guess the team (based on their horrid bench form video a couple of years ago) have done their share of Bro weights while letting tissue get way too tight so something like a pec tear (that's 2 in 2 years to our players?) isn't a completely random event.
 

the flying ham

Cancelled
Dec 12, 2006
7,403
16,059
AFL Club
North Melbourne
Yeh possibly. The long Dumont rehab seems a little curious but calves can be bastards.

Without inside info I'd put LMac at 50/50 luck/blame. A good conditioning coach would be testing their strength/mobility per joint and actually doing something about addressing it. Kinda like Kangatech was meant to do, but actually doing it and not just advertising that you do it.

Completely from the outside I'm going to guess the team (based on their horrid bench form video a couple of years ago) have done their share of Bro weights while letting tissue get way too tight so something like a pec tear (that's 2 in 2 years to our players?) isn't a completely random event.
Its a collision sport, and no amount of testing can account for the ballistic movement of a tackle, particularly when you and your target are moving so literally impossible to replicate a tackle given the amount of variables involved. Rigby league gets plenty of them, years ago the suggestion in pec injury numbers was due to the speed of the game. Rugby league players literally trained to tackle and they cant stop them. Its bad luck. Variables didnt land in lukes favour.
 
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