Re: "Kreuzer The Key To Finals" - Malthouse
Reply #19 –
In regards to Kreuzer doing his knee and us rushing him back. 12 months appears to be the AFL norm.
However, in the NFL, there have been some absolutely ludicrous comebacks made.
For those that care, i'm a Vikings fan, and although of late has been a bit sketchy, i am an Adrian Peterson fan. His comeback story is crazy good.
For those who don't know, Peterson is a running back. He has been the best running back the league has had in quite a while. He has just about every Vikings runnings back record there is, and quite a few NFL ones along with it. This guy is equivalent to your Gary Ablett / Chris Judd types here in terms of standing in the game.
On xmas eve 2011, Peterson blew out his knee. Got tackled side on with full body weight of his oppenent directed squarely on the side of his knee. He tore his ACL and MCL. Career potentially over. He had surgery over new years and vowed to come back bigger and better than ever.
9 months later, he was back playing Round 1 of the new season. Remarkable enough, sure.
However, by the end of the 16 games that season, he fell just 7 yards short of the all-time single season rushing record. 2097 yards he ran for. A 'good' running back gets half that for a season. A excellent one averages 100 yards a game - 1600. He won a multitude of awards in his comeback season, the best of which was the highest possible award - League MVP.
If he was a FF in the AFL, it would be like him averaging 40 touches a game 9 months after having surgery, or kicking 150 goals.
Yes, Peterson is a freak athlete and elite in the sport. However, some other NFL players have played after 7 months out of the game.
The AFL has a '12 month' guideline, but that is not shared throughout the world. For the record, i'd rate what Peterson has/had to do as harder than what an AFL player has to do in terms of stress on the knee over your average game.
With all due respect, this seems to be the exception, and not the rule.
Call me bitter, call me pessimistic, but to me, this just reinforces the fact that drugs in sport are so far ahead of the anti doping authority that they are able to rebuild a blokes knee, and have him come back faster, better, stronger, harder...
Contrast this to Kouta. Did his knee, and returned to the the game a shadow of his former self. Still a bloody good player, but not the dominant force able to influence results off his own boot anymore.
I would be staggered if there was more known today than there was back then in terms of how to rebuild a knee.
The fact that amateurs are treated the same way, and sometimes have a 400% difference in recovery makes me really suspect about proffesionals these days.
I guess the Essendon saga is a loss of innocense in more ways than one.