History for Mainland FC

austin111

Its hard to predict how this game will play out. We will have a better idea once we know who is out injured. Currently its 8 players out or under an injury cloud.
If the team is severely weekened with the likes of James, Conchie, Isighi etc not available then i am afraid we will be overwhelmed. 
The key to the match could be after the hour mark. AFC have a very powerful bench where as we will probably just have the kids.
Its such a shame because the way we are playing, if we had our best 11 players available we could have won this.

Mileusnic, Ishige, Conchie, James, but importantly also Tim Payne.  While we have potential backup options, these are not really like for like, not necessarily in terms of quality but more in regard to minutes they can effectively play due to young age and/or their own health condition.
I raised the question of injuries in preseason in an earlier post, but one can argue injuries to Ishige and Conchie were caused by the opposition.   
As such I disagree with the notion of "letting these things go" by the referees because ultimately it is counterproductive to ALM business.  It does not improve the spectacle but it may require clubs to have a longer and more expensive bench than they would otherwise, least an injury to two or three key players sends a potentially good season down the gurgler.  
This may be a far-fetched argument, and others may want to pick it to bits; but I thought that WPX is one of the few financially stable clubs despite (or because of) having a decent quality squad at a price.  In the previous decade ALM may not have cared if we disappeared from the league, but I reckon this is not the case anymore.  We are a proof that our model works, without breaking the bank.  Not punishing the repeat tackles like those of Harrison Steele is detrimental to the economic model of the league, if clubs are to thrive with less broadcast funding that limits our recruitment and salary budget of a high quality bench.