Richo on Monday night mentioned painkiller jabs weren't uncommon at Richmond. Mooney said every player at Geelong had at least 2-3 jabs per year.Gift of the jab: painkillers in footyPeter Hanlon | August 6, 2009
THE pre-game team meeting is over, and athletes brimming with nervous energy bounce back into the change room. Limbs are strapped, muscles massaged, backs slapped in encouragement, earplugs inserted, great deeds visualised. In an hour, the only part of a footballer’s week that truly matters will begin.
But some are still not quite ready for battle.
No one takes any notice of the bloke who slips through the medical room door. Inside, doctor and patient exchange pleasantries, the offending spot is located and marked with pen. A few millilitres of clear liquid is drawn from a vial, steel pierces skin.
It takes a few minutes to kick in, but when it does it’s like winding back the clock. No longer does it feel like round 19, when it’s not just old folk huddled around radiators who curse winter’s depths, but footballers whose bodies are groaning towards the end of another brutal campaign.
Suddenly, an arm can again reach for the sky. A leg can coil like a spring and launch the body at a contest. A tap to the ribs no longer brings a tear to the eye. For the next couple of hours, a weary warrior will play pain-free. That pre-game detour is so like a quick dip in the healing waters of Lourdes, it’s little wonder players joke about getting a shot of ‘‘Geez Juice’’.
The ‘‘jab’’ has always been something of a dirty secret, albeit a small one that everybody’s in on. Nobody likes to admit they’re doing it, even though using local anaesthetic to mask pain is legal, as it allows the individual to perform only as he could before, not do more than his normal ability allows.
Ross Lyon said last week that St Kilda wasn’t resting players with an eye to September, it just wasn’t injecting to get them on the ground.
As ever, mere mention pricks more than just skin; even in the afterglow of a rare early August hangover, Adam Simpson wouldn’t play along with goading Sunday Footy Show panellists about how many shots it took to get his wrecked calf up for and then through his valedictory game. Just some good, deep massage, he said.
As a medical measure, it is untouched by scientific sophistication. ‘‘It’s still just a matter of sticking a needle in the bit that hurts,’’ says veteran sports doctor Peter Brukner.
Many with access to footy medical rooms will tell you it has become a last resort, overtaken by modern injury management practice. A relic that has gone the way of the long lunch — it still happens, but not with the hedonistic abandon of days gone by.
‘‘It’s nowhere near as prevalent as it used to be in footy,’’ says Chris Bradshaw, Geelong’s doctor who has worked in football for 22 years. ‘‘It was almost part of the culture. No disrespect to the doctors who were doing things then, but we’ve just become better at managing things.’’
Yet the waters are still murky. Another long-time football staffer with experience at several clubs says its use hasn’t necessarily waned, it just depends on the philosophy of the doctor. Some clubs, he says, ‘‘will jab everything to get them out there’’. Others resort to it only in times of dire need, such as a final — or when every game is viewed as a final.
He has never heard a coach tell a doctor what to do.
‘‘He might ask the question, but you don’t see a coach saying, ‘You jab him up and you do X, Y, Z’.’’
But he doesn’t rule out the reverse. ‘‘I wouldn’t underestimate the cloak and dagger aspect where, in coaching roles or as a footy manager, you wouldn’t know it was happening.
‘‘There’s a whole raft of reasons medical staff would want to protect themselves. There could be more going on behind the scenes than we know.’’
Brukner says the decision is never taken lightly. The case of Adrian Whitehead ensures that. His claims against Carlton were settled out of court after his career was curtailed by foot fractures allegedly exacerbated by playing with painkilling injections. Whatever the scale, there will always be a hangover.
‘‘Shocking, just shocking,’’ former Collingwood champion Mick McGuane says of the regular injections he received into ligaments around his pubic bone, when he laboured under a long-term groin injury that would today be called osteitis pubis. ‘‘It’s something I don’t miss, I can tell you.’’
McGuane is also testament to what can happen when the jab goes wrong, as it did against Adelaide at Victoria Park in the mid-1990s. He’d already had a painkilling injection to get through a fitness test on the Friday, woke up sore the next morning, and by the warm-up knew he was in trouble.
‘‘I dropped the footy and my leg just wasn’t willing to come through. It was like I had three or four bricks tied to the inside of my leg, I just couldn’t lift it.’’
There is no greater example of McGuane’s ability to find the ball than the fact he had more than 20 touches by the time he retreated to the bench just after half-time, although he admits ‘‘about 18 of them were handballs, and the rest mis-kicks’’.
All bets are off come the grand final, and the cloak of secrecy comes off, too, once the job is done.
Leigh Matthews famously joked after the Brisbane Lions’ 2003 three-peat that there was a shortage of painkilling injections in Australia because the Lions had used them all. Eighteen vials were reportedly drained on grand final day, many ending up around Nigel Lappin’s fractured ribs (although Lappin maintained the code of silence this week).
Regular users are rare, but they are out there. One player who is far better acquainted with the pointy end of a needle than he’d like says it remains an inexact science — sometimes it works, and others it has no effect, requiring another jab mid-game, or even during the warm-up. Post-game, the anaesthetic might wear off in the rooms, during dinner, or maybe not until the middle of the night. ‘‘I’ve gone to sleep and it’s still numb, then at one or two in the morning you’re rolling around in bed. The pain comes on pretty quick, like you’ve been hit with a block of wood.’’
Next comes recovery, when ‘‘you throw everything at it’’ — ice, heat, get in the water, get on the bike — in a bid to get up for the next week. If it’s still no good, that detour through the medical room will be part of the match-day routine again.
It’s no way to play, but sometimes it’s the only way.
To jab or not to jabYESHANDS
The most common area injected, according to leading sports physician and Age columnist Dr Peter Brukner. "Can be effective on a fracture or nasty knock on a finger or thumb."
RIBS
Also common. "Bruised ribs can be extremely painful for two to three weeks, making it virtually impossible to play without a jab."
SHOULDER-AC JOINT
A minor AC sprain generally means 10 days before the arm can be used normally, but playing sooner with a jab and strong taping is unlikely to do further damage. "If you've got seven days, you might jab it and tape it and see how you go," Brukner says.
NOJOINTS
Generally a no-go zone. "You can put it into the ligaments around, say, the ankle joint, but not into it," Brukner says. "We don't like putting it into the joint, you lose that sense of feeling."
TORN MUSCLES
Even if you can't feel it happening, a torn muscle will probably tear further under exertion. Which doesn't matter if, like Adam Simpson, you never have to play again.
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