Moulding the clay often needs just the right touch

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This article was published 19/06/2015 (3761 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s the most delicate balancing act a professional head coach does during a football training camp — finding that fine line where he is extracting maximum performance out of his players without pushing them so hard they get hurt before the season begins.

And Winnipeg Blue Bombers head coach Mike O’Shea — in a brutally frank self-assessment — admits he’s failed to find that balance, judging by all the injuries dogging his team during 2015 Bombers training camp.

“I need to be more careful, obviously, than I’ve been,” said O’Shea, about a difficult camp in which as many as 11 projected starters have been hurt at the same time.

“We’ve just had too many guys in sick bay for my liking. And my performance in that regard is up for review. I’ve already started my 2016 training camp file and made notes that on certain days I need to make some changes.

“It doesn’t matter what the dates are — Day 1 is Day 1, Day 2 is Day 2. And on Day 4 this year, we ended up with some injuries and I’m looking at what happened there and how do I change Day 3 and Day 4 so I don’t get a bunch of injuries lumped in there again next year.

“It’s definitely a topic of conversation.”

The irony of all this — and it’s not lost on a former player like O’Shea — is that these injuries are happening at a time when players are reporting to training camp in better shape than they’ve ever been.

The old days of coming to camp to get into shape are a thing of the past and any player who reports to camp fat and out of shape these days will quickly find himself with his release papers.

Yet, for all the improved fitness in the modern football player, O’Shea — a former linebacker who played 16 seasons in the CFL — said it seems like there were a lot fewer injuries during training camp back in the old days.

“I wonder if guys are showing up to camp already burned out,” said O’Shea. “The fat and out of shape guys in the old days — this is a theory — would do a bunch of different things during the off-season.

“Instead of just sprint train and weight train like these players nowadays do every day, those guys would play men’s league soccer in the off-season or slow-pitch or golf. Whatever they did, they were doing a bunch of different things and they didn’t seem to get injured as much once they got to camp.”

The challenge of keeping players healthy through a training camp consisting of two-a-day practices and 16-hour days for the better part of three weeks falls on the shoulders of Bombers trainer Al Couture.

The challenge facing Couture and his six-person staff is twofold — helping players avoid the kinds of muscle pulls and contusions that can keep them off the practice field and, when they inevitably happen, getting those players back on the field as quickly as possible.

As for the other type of training camp injury — the season-ender like the torn Achilles tendon that sent rookie receiver Greg Childs home after the first week of camp — Couture said even the best prepared football player sometimes just loses the lottery that is life in a violent game.

“There’s nothing we can do about an injury like that,” he said. “Those things just happen and you feel bad for the guy and you try to manage it. But that’s that and there’s nothing we can do to prevent those kinds of situations…

“This is a collision sport. And these are 300-pound projectiles flying around out there. When a guy goes flying into another guy’s leg, I can’t do anything to prevent that. There are injuries that we can help prevent, but we certainly can’t prevent all of them.”

With as many as 90 players in camp all battling for their livelihoods, Couture said a big part of his job is helping players practise through the inevitable injuries that happen during training camp.

“There is work that can be done on certain kinds of injuries that help that player get through training camp, where he’s hurting bad before and he’s hurting bad after but we’re able to let him practice through that injury whereas he might not have been able to if he hadn’t gotten treatment,” he said.

With so much pressure to stay on the field in a sport where the old saying has always been, “You can’t make the club from the tub,” Couture was asked if some players try to hide injuries from the training staff lest the coaching staff find out.

“They can try but it’s quickly revealed out there on the field and on film,” said Couture.

“One of my favourite sayings is, ‘What’s the difference between a hurt player and a bad player? There really isn’t much of a difference.’ ”

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek