Sheffield Wednesday: Red flags, yoga and Middlewood Road - Behind the scenes of Owls injury investigation

It’s a familiar sound, the groaning hum of frustration that fills Hillsborough whenever a Sheffield Wednesday player pulls up injured.
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The frustration comes from the fact that it’s nothing new. It’s a problem that has hung over the club too long and throughout its modern era, through the reigns of new managers, new players, new medical teams and new training schedules.

Messrs Carvalhal, Luhukay, Bruce, Monk and Moore have all faced the curse of Wednesday injury crises at one time or another. It’s a theme the club can’t seem to shake.

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Tuesday’s win over Morecambe came at a high price, with key trio Harlee Dean, Josh Windass and Fisayo Dele-Bashiru all hobbling out of the match with what looked to be nasty injuries.

Less than 24 hours later it was revealed by The Star that Arsenal loanee Tyreece John-Jules faces a lengthy stint out.

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It all means Wednesday currently have 10 first team players out injured, many of those long-term. It’s a ludicrous number that follows on from a similar crisis in November that Darren Moore described as the worst he’d seen in 30 years of football. Sheer bad luck, you’d feel, if it didn’t keep happening time and again.

Around that time the Owls boss announced that alongside the club’s medical team he was to launch an investigation into why these issues keep arising at S6 and while it would only be fair to allow a period of months to assess a near decade-old issue, initial findings have been made.

Sheffield Wednesday have again had injury crises to deal with this season.Sheffield Wednesday have again had injury crises to deal with this season.
Sheffield Wednesday have again had injury crises to deal with this season.
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Though it was initially believed that players had undergone isokinetic testing to better understand any central cause of their injury issues, it has since become clear that that particular style of testing is unsuitable for mid-season and that other methods were completed, producing interesting results. The isokinetic tests will have to wait for the summer.

“We found there were about half a dozen players that had definite biomechanic weaknesses in their bodies,” Moore said on a detailed report filed by Rob Lee and his medical team at the back end of last year.

“Those players have had defined and specific programmes put in place to work on those specific areas. There were real red flags in terms of where they were at.

“We’ve been consistently working with them twice a week in those areas.

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“What you’re looking to do is to strengthen those areas to protect the players and give them that bit more robustness.

“Even though you’re working on these things it doesn’t protect you from sustaining little knocks but there was definitely red flags with about half a dozen players.”

It is understood that Wednesday entered into welcoming a yoga instructor into training sessions late last year, though since tighter Covid restrictions were imposed in the run-up to Christmas that has not been possible to continue. Post-training routines have been adapted in an attempt to lengthen muscle groups when tired.

Moore said: “After certain sessions we have to allow the muscles to recover and then stretch them or even stretching them when players are fatigued, so their bodies get used to that in a game. Muscles do get fatigued but doing yoga sessions and training them is important.

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“These are things we’ve introduced here because of the testing we did with the whole squad and after looking at them biomechanically.”

One area never far from the conversation when it comes to the route of Wednesday’s injury woes is the club’s training ground and playing surface at Hillsborough. Steve Bruce hinted at as much during his short time as Wednesday boss.

The fact is that nobody can fault the club for not attempting to put that right – investment has been put into improving the playing surfaces at both Middlewood Road and Hillsborough in recent years. At the outset of their modern injury woes, hundreds of thousands of pounds were put into a recovery facility and new gym.

Sources close to players past and present have confided to The Star that while the surfaces are an area of concern, it’s unlikely to be the sole reason for the club’s issues.

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Speaking to The Star, club captain Barry Bannan expressed his frustration at the repeated difficulties the club has been having and suggested some of his success in terms of staying fit comes down to personal responsibility.

It’s one of several quirks to the situation that he, Liam Palmer and Jack Hunt are some of the players to have spent the most time at the club and also three of its most injury-free.

“I'm quite lucky in that I've stayed fit for the majority of my time here,” Bannan said. “But if I'm going to be quite honest I'm not one of these people who is doing hours in the gym trying to do everything to prevent injury.

“I'm a bit more old school where I know what my body needs and I find that if I do too much in the gym I start to create problems for myself.

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“I tend to stick to doing some core. It's different for everybody, you have your own programme. I can only touch on where I am with my body, I know my own body and I know what I need. I'm 31 and I've been quite lucky up to this point so I'll stick to what I believe is right for me.

“We have great sports scientists here who put on all the programmes and we're really well looked after. I can't really put a finger on why we get these injuries.

“There are obviously some you can't prevent, that's the nature of football. But the muscle injuries are preventable. We need to look into that and make it better. It's hurting us as a squad and as a club.”

Hurting them it is. Efforts are being made to arrest this time-and-again issue and testing will continue. It’s no small problem to address.