All Blacks: Casualty list not so severe

Andrew Hore. Photo / Getty Images

Broken men everywhere and no sign of the carnage easing has given the impression rugby medics need to be building a different breed of athlete.

It feels like the injury toll has never been this severe before. In the last few weeks of Super14, down they went - Ma'a Nonu, Stephen Donald, Richard Kahui, Andrew Hore and Isaia Toeava.

They joined Tom Donnelly, Mils Muliaina, Mike Delany, Sitiveni Sivivatu, Ali Williams and Jason Eaton on the casualty list.

Benson Stanley said he was selected because he was the last man standing. He was only half joking.

But while the situation might seem desperate, All Black medic Dr Deb Robinson says 2010 is almost a breeze compared with 2009. Last year she says was much worse for injuries and hit the All Blacks much harder.

"Last year we didn't have Richie [McCaw]. We didn't have Dan [Carter]. We didn't have Ali Williams.

Conrad Smith was unavailable. Richard Kahui needed surgery. Anthony Boric couldn't play because his toe had to be operated on and then in the first game we lost Adam Thomson to a broken hand.

"Then in the Tri Nations in we lost Isaia Toeava and Keven Mealamu to serious injury as well.

"Whenever there are serious injuries during Super14, I will be on the phone to Ted [head coach Graham Henry], and last year he was sick of hearing from me. This year we hardly spoke."

From Robinson's perspective, there are certainly no concerns about a trend of injuries they are failing to prevent.

There is no sense of the physicality of the game having outstripped the strength and conditioning of the athletes. Nor does Robinson believe there has been any drop in the standards of conditioning and rehabilitation, or the diagnosis and treatment of injuries.

Robinson puts Williams, recovering from a second Achilles operation, and Toeava, who has a spur on his hip, in the highly unusual category.

Other than that, she is sure the All Blacks have been hit by a combination of bad luck (that saw Muliaina fracture his thumb and Hore dislocate his shoulder) and the inevitable consequence of hugely powerful men playing an extremely physical sport.

A cursory look across the Tasman reveals the Wallabies are in the midst of a similar battle with injuries and, while the Springboks might be less affected in 2010, Robinson says they have had a few horror years in recent times as well.

What's possibly distorting the picture, making everyone feel there is need for New Zealand to assess the conditioning and training programmes of the players, is the cluster of injuries that have occurred in the same position.

With so many midfielders falling in the final weeks of Super14, it focused attention on a specific position of concern and led to general conclusions being made. That concern was amplified by Hore's injury, which highlighted the lack of depth at hooker.

"It's always the way when you have injuries to players in specialist positions," says Robinson. "The two things that we don't want to see are guys re-injuring the same area and we don't want to see a run of the same injuries. We had that in the build-up in 2007 when we had a lot of calf and hamstring injuries."

Mention of players with recurring injuries brings Williams into discussion - the big lock remains part of the All Black coaches' thinking and they would love to see him make a successful return.

Robinson says the early post-surgery feedback has been encouraging: "The surgeon has felt the tendon and says everything seems pretty good. We are going to take things really conservatively with Ali and monitor him very closely."

At some stage in the not too distant future Williams will dispense with his moonboot and begin load-bearing. After that, it will be a case of slowly building towards walking, then running, then full training.

Robinson can't put a time on Williams' recovery but he will be able to play again at the highest level.

"The most important thing is that Ali has always been a good athlete. That will really help him. If you look at Dan Carter, he recovered from his Achilles surgery to the extent now you almost wouldn't know which leg was affected. There is no reason to believe Ali can't do the same."