Originally Posted by
Geoff Parkstone
Consider Clough's title winning side - weren't there just 12 players used all season? Nowadays every team will have used more than 12 players before the first game of the season is over.
MA has hit the nail on the head, but can I just add that sports scientists have exacerbated the trend. At the moment England have Archer, both Currans, Stone, Saqib and Fisher out with "stress fractures" and Woakes also missing. Back in the days of Trueman and Statham, I don't imagine anybody had even heard of stress fractures, let lone diagnosed one. Send today's sports scientist back to the 50's and 60's and they would probably have stopped Trueman, Statham et al from bowling together with many others.
the more you fine tune a bosy, the more likely it is to fail, but also the more you look for problems, the more likely you are to find them. If todays palyers just turned up at the pavilion after a good fry up, turned their arm over a couple of times and got on with playing, there would be far fewer on the physio's bench IM sure