Wane: Injuries were just bad luck

Micky McIlorum broke his ankle against Brisbane last February

Several frontline players were missing from the Warriors’ line-up for large spells throughout the 2016 campaign.

Wane’s plight was highlighted by the fact he handed eight academy-products debuts – by contrast, only one broke through the previous year.

The head coach says “everything” was assessed in a post-season review to look at ways of minimising the number of injuries.

And he is confident they were down to misfortune, with several – Micky McIlorum, Dom Manfredi and Liam Farrell – from collisions during games. Wane said: “We were just really unlucky. The long-term injuries were all very freakish injuries.

“At the start of last year I wrote a team down – my strongest team – but we never got anywhere near it all year.

“We were without five, six players from my strongest team, and that was every game last year.

“You look at Micky’s broken ankle, a terrible injury, it’s very hard to suffer that type of injury.

“Tony Clubb was injured in a game – that was a crusher, an illegal tackle – the same with Faz, Dom... they were injured in matches, it had nothing to do with what we’ve done on the training field.

“We have a very good medical department, we’ve done our diligence in what we’ve done in training and everything we’ve done.”

Wane says they have made minor changes to their schedule. “How long we spend in the video room, that’s been analysed, we’ve changed our warm-up a bit and timings before we start training,” he added.

“Everything has been looked at and we’ll just tweak a few things and make sure it works.

“But the injuries had nothing to do with what we’ve done on the training field.”

Of those injured, Sam Tomkins (foot) and Manfredi (knee) will miss the start of the 2017 campaign.

Clubb, McIlorum and Joel Tomkins are expected to be fit for the start of the new season, having all missed October’s Grand Final triumph.