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Injury woes force changes for Crows

Adelaide will modify their AFL training regime after suffering a glut of injuries at the start the AFL season.

Adelaide will make changes to their AFL training program in a bid to end their hamstring injury crisis.

Skipper Taylor Walker is the seventh hamstring victim at West Lakes this season, following Eddie Betts, Matt Crouch, Kyle Cheney, Kyle Hartigan, Sam Gibson and Lachlan Murphy.

Walker is being given every chance to play against Carlton at Adelaide Oval on Saturday night, but is likely to be rested after he failed to play out the win against Gold Coast.

The Crows have done well to sit fifth with a 4-2 record after labouring under the weight of one of the longest injury lists in the league.

Coach Don Pyke revealed the club's fitness regime had been put under the microscope after the run of casualties and would be modified.

"I don't fear there's going to be any more," Pyke said of the glut of hamstring injuries on Wednesday.

"I think what we've got is a series of injuries and we've had some discussions about some things in our program that we can change.

"We think with those modifications we'll stop having those (hamstring injuries).

"It's not ideal at the moment, but I'm pretty confident this is just a little phase we go through and in four or five weeks' time, we'll be talking about something different.

"Right now, we've got a situation where we need to make some changes to avoid this continuing, but we're really comfortable we're in a good space to do that."

Walker had a slow start to the season after a foot injury interrupted his preparation.

While giving both he and Rory Sloane (foot) a chance to play against the Blues, it wouldn't surprise to see the club err on the side of caution.

"I don't know (with Sloane) ... he's super keen to play," Pyke said.

"We'll see how he trains and what his movement is like and make sure we're not guided by his desire to play, versus his injury, but I'll be confident with him."

Betts is expected to return to face his old club after missing two games with a hamstring strain.


2 min read

Published

Source: AAP



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