There will always be one or two players like that in most teams look at McLaughlin at Leinster or Felix Jones at Munster.

P.S. Did anyone ever read this?

www.rfu.com/takingpart/coach/coachresour...t20conditioning.ashx

fascinating. Ken Quarrie who is the All-Blacks conditioning expert and sports scientist helped formulate it and there's a huge ammount of tip and god points for any coaches out there.

a couple of players that we've signed have even before they arrived at Connacht had a history of being out of the Game for lengthy periods due to injury, I'm thinking specifically of McSharry and Tonetti. in general it appears to me that when our players get injured they are out for lenghty periods compared to injuries to players at the other provinces. Maybe that's just a perception on my part

Rossie and ummm, get it! When you take away concussions, bone breaks and ligament damage, none of which a s&c coach can do anything about before it happens, you can clearly see our muscular injuries are no worse than leinster who are generally thought to have a very good s&c regime.

yes depth is an issue which I already alluded to but no team has limitless depth, leinster's third choice hooker was ail or a similar level until recently and now that Strauss is out dundon is upgraded to second choice. Has their fourth choice ever played for the senior team? Do people here know who Munster's third choice props are? Even munster's first and second choice loosehead props have barely more than a season's experience between them, Munster just got very lucky to have someone like Cronin who was ready to go from the start and not another archer or rodney.

All this doesn't mean Connacht don't have an injury crisis, it just means they're not alone!

I think that you can compare like with like. Leinster lose 15 + players for a third of a season to the international windows. That's not including the u20s either and they make up at least a third of that squad also.

Connacht injury list is comparable to other teams. The 7 and 12 injuries are very unlucky and tend to distort the view of this topic as a result.

You cant really compare Leinster and Connacht. The squad depth is much deeper in Leinster so that players can be rested with little or no effect on the team. Ie Strauss is rested and Cronin comes in, International for international, Mcfaddan is rested and Fitzgerald comes in etc.

Even in game time you can take a player off at 50mins and rest him with no discernible drop in standards.

With Connacht the drop in some positions is noticeable and then the drop from 1st choice to 3rd choice is huge. So in a situation where say a hooker is injured and the 3rd choice hooker is on the bench the 2nd choice hooker will be expected to play that bit longer than normal and may pick up a knock and so the injury crisis keeps deepening.

In my opinion there is something fundamentally wrong with our fitness approach. Whether that is preparation, recovery or treatment. For years we have been dealing with huge injury lists with players our for what appears to always be longer than initially expected. There's no point comparing injury lists as that doesn't give any idea, you need to dig deeper. What are the guys doing pre-season and pre-game? What are they doing after games? What do they do in their down time. Whatever it is that's being done isn't the right approach. Just my 2 cents

Recently there's been a lot of talk about injuries and whether we have picked up more than our fair share. So I decided to compare Connacht and Leinster like for like to see if there was anything to the issue. I've left out academy players so guys like Conor Finn and Shane Layden are excluded for instance. I've done this because realistically I think most of the academy players would not have been called upon except for injury to a senior player.

I've also for the most part concentrated on injuries this season alone although I've taken note of what I've called 'legacy injuries' – the likes of McSharry or Sean O'Brien who carried injuries into the season and prevented them from being available from the start.

A couple of these have been left blank because I can't recall what the injury in question is and both teams websites are fairly poor for navigating the news section past a few weeks. If people can respond with info on the blanks that would be super I'll add them to the OP. Finally I've included all names that appeared on the injury list regardless of whether they are currently fit or not.

I've tried to avoid making claims about whether these injuries are acceptable or not because I am not the distant cousin of a medical professional (literally or figuratively). However it seems clear to me that you can at the very least divide for yourself injuries into categories of either being a regular incident or a freak incident in the game. Furthermore some things like bone breaks cannot be attributed to the S&C team imo unless we've been fielding vitamin D deficient grannies disguised as twenty somethings. Things like concussions and ligament tears happen and there's very little the S&C people can do. Things like muscle strains or tears are harder to assign a cause to but it is likely that if it is a systematic fault of the coaches that it would be repeated throughout the team at a greater than normal level.




Connacht Injuries 2013/14 season.

Browne, Hamstring tear, in game.
So'oialo, ankle sprain, in game.
Harris-Wright, torn bicep, in game (recurring).
White, Calf strain, in game.
Faloon, broken bone, in game.
Buckley, who knows.
McSharry, legacy injury, carried into season.
Loughney, concussion, in game.
Griffin, foot muscle tear, in game.
Poolman, muscle strain/tightness, in game/afterwards. possibly recurring?
Muldoon, calf tear(?), in game.
F. Murphy, in training?
McKeon, legacy
Nikora, shoulder, ?
Ronaldson, ?(was minor whatever it was, a dead leg?)
Heenan, Medial Ligaments, in game.
Healy, ?(also minor)


Leinster injuries, 2013/14 season.
Healy, legacy from lions tour, in match.
Strauss, heart condition.
Ross, hamstring, recurring?
Bent, legacy(?) neck.
Cullen, ankle surgery,
McCarthy, elbow injury
Murphy, ligaments?, surgery.
O'Brien, legacy from lions tour, arm and knee surgery in the summer.
Jennings, broken bone in hand.
Reddan, legacy?
Fitzgerald, the daddy of legacy injuries, however more recently strained groin this season.
BOD, calf strain, recurring.
Tuqiri, hamstring, in match, also bicep prior?
McFadden, tight hamstring, withdrawn prior to match.
Goodman, legacy ?


At the moment when you add them up its 17 connacht v 15 leinster. Personally I'm a little surprised as I thought there would be more leinster injuries as they are a bigger squad - perhaps others here will remember some I missed and we can add them later. If you take out So'oailo who's gone now anyways and Buckley because seriously, who knows what that's about - its 15 v 15, hardly a vast chasm between the two teams, and I'm not sure that Quinn Roux and a couple of others haven't also picked up injuries so far this season.

Hardly any of our injuries are either recurring or legacies. I forget if TOH has actually been injured yet this season but last year he seemed to have a spell of recurring strains. Hopefully that's cleared up. It seems to me that this can often be the case with younger players or athletes in general as we saw with Griffin, but when treated right it can come good. One other thing to note is its 6 v 5 or 7 on muscle strains/tears depending on what exactly Bent and McCarthy injured, which once again suggests our muscle injuries are not abnormally high.

The difference of course comes down to who is available as back up and crucially the number and quality of academy hopefuls. Last year when Murphy was injured there was no one available as back up sh except a plucky academy kid. If both Boss and Reddan are injured Leinster still have McGrath and Cooney to call on - not necessarily vastly experienced but representing Ireland u-20s and generally well regarded by fans as likely to make the step up.

Conn of course have the added bad luck atm of managing to have four potential 7 options injured at once now that Conneely is done - that's a problem no team can effectively plan for, I don't know who Leinster's fifth choice 7 is but chances are he hasn't played for the A team never mind the seniors.

All in all I think we can agreed I've split a lot of digital ink, but I also think there's a strong case here that Connacht are not experiencing an abnormal injury crisis in comparison to a top of the league contender, except of course in the 7 position and to a slightly lesser extent at 12.