The Chair Maker wrote:
In my opinion it was more intense for a forward when Wardy was playing. ill explain why.
Wardy had to play for the full 80 minutes, not for him the luxury of getting a breather after 20 mins then only coming back for the final 20 of the game.
Sure, Ward played for eighty minutes. But so did players ten, twenty or thirty years prior to that. Are you suggesting someone aged 33 from any of those periods could compete, too? The key here is
intensity. Basically you are saying 50 minutes of high intensity football is the same as 80 minutes at lower intensity. But this is like arguing ten minutes sat naked in minus 40 degrees has the same effect on the human body as thirty spent at minus 10 degrees (which is not true).
Also in those days RL was a lot more rugged with a lot of cheapshots going unpunished. Todays RL is played by angels, compared to the trained killers of Wardys era.
We're talking about the body's ability (at age 33-35/36) to cope with SL intensity football - not outrageous cheap shots (which are largely gone from the game). Having your jaw broke three times in your career has no measurable effect I'm aware of on one's cardiovascular system.
After the match players didnt have the luxury of sports science to help them recover, there were no cryogenic chambers to take away the bumps and bruises. The medical science of fixing injuries was also far less developed. Any serious injury and your career was over.
You're right. We do possess all sorts of recovery aids players from yesteryear never enjoyed. Now, given all these medical miracles HOW MANY 35 year old second-row forwards / props regularly do the business for SL clubs? How many are there in the NRL - a cash-rich competition which is far in advance of our own in terms of recovery methods and systems.
Wardy had to be in work the next day lifting paving stones, whereas todays full time pros just go into rehabilitation, where they get hydro therapy, and physiotherapy etc.
The way you talk anyone would swear Ward spent his working day in some Anatolian granite quarry, shackled at the ankle and flogged within an inch of his life. Other than the fact that he lifted paving stones you have no idea about the details of Kevin Ward's working day. For all we know he lifted flags once a week and in the remaining days performed other duties. In any case there is no known correlation between the two roles so discussion is pointless.
Wardy had to play sunday, wednesday, sunday in a season that could encompass over 50 games. Todays players moan about having to play 30 games.
You're pulling this stuff out of the air. It's like saying scuba diving to twenty five metres twice in one day has the same effect on the human body as once to fifty.
The key to being able to continue playing after 30 is in the legs. Provided the legs retain the speed then you can keep on going. Steve Menzies being the freakish example of a player who at 38 is still better than most backrowers in SL.
Manu is the type of player who if he loses a yard of pace could move into the front row. So while i think 2 years would be optimal, 3 years isnt that risky.
I'm not a sports scientist but even I know "Speed" has nothing to do with it. The truth is there is no single key as the body is an enormously complicated biological mechanism. We could talk about the cardio-vascular system and the chances of it being able to match approximately the output of someone ten years younger. We could talk about our individual ability to resist the restrictions of age. There are any number of factors standing in a player's way past thirty. I'm not saying they cannot be overcome but in a high-intensity, high-collision sport the chances are slim - as evidenced by
THE SHEER RARITY OF 35 YO PROPS in SL & the NRL.
You might be happy locking up a hefty chunk of the club's change for three years on a long-shot. But when there are far more pressing issues at scrum-half and centre I'd say signing Manu amounts to reckless panic buying.
