- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
After the latest injury to Christian Petracca, you wonder what Melbourne have done to deserve this type of luck. Run over a cat, broken a mirror and walked under endless ladders?
Back in 2001 at the so-called super draft the number nine pick was used by Melbourne on a guy named Luke Molan, a key-defender who they hoped would develop into a possible tall midfielder. He never played an AFL game after suffering complications from a knee injury.
The list of players unfulfilling their potential due to injury is long – Molan, Daniel Bell, Lucas Cook, Jack Trengove, Jack Grimes, Luke Tapscott and Mitch Clark.
You could argue that all football clubs have injuries, and it’s what separates the good teams from the great teams, but take seven top 20 draft picks out of a team and this not only hampers the aspirations of the team but the entire club. Ultimately you turn into a burden, you become the Melbourne Football Club.
Now, no more than three months since the 2014 draft and Melbourne’s number two pick, Christian Petracca, has succumbed to a season-ending knee injury. The forward line of Jay Kennedy-Harris, Jesse Hogan, Chris Dawes, Petracca, Christian Salem and Jeremy Howe will have to wait until the 2016 season.
Petracca is a ready-made AFL footballer, he has a physique that will allow him to insert quickly into Melbourne’s best 22. The knock on Petracca throughout his junior days was his endurance. At the combine last year he ran a 14.12 in the beep test, which silenced most critics, but come day one of pre-season he was left behind most others, not unusual for most kids in their first year of footy. But the Demons brains-trust knew what he needed to work on in 2015.
The coaches at Melbourne see Petracca as a forward who will become a good midfielder once he can trim down and increase his endurance. This year would’ve been a mixture of AFL and VFL, following a similar path to his namesake, Salem. Rupturing his ACL on Monday means that endurance training will be put back a year, which has a flow on effect on his career in the Melbourne midfield.
Of all the injuries Petracca could’ve had, anything to do with his legs would’ve been the least wanted. He needed kilometres into those thighs, he needed to trim down, if the football gods said he needed to do an injury then do a shoulder, not a knee, definitely not a knee.
On the outside Petracca is projecting an air of positivity, because he has to. Inside though you could imagine he’d be devastated, the kids these days aren’t naïve, they know that the average life of an AFL footballer is five years, a fifth of his is already gone without bothering the statisticians.
The wait for potential to deliver continues for the Demons fans, but after all they’re used to it, they’ve been waiting since 2001. Just stay away from cats, mirror and ladders, because we all want to see these kids get a decent crack.
Who’s in your ultimate team? Pick the best team and compete with other fans for daily prizes on Draftstars. For the best odds on the game try out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Think. Is this a bet you really want to place? Set a deposit limit.